Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr.

by Davis, Sammy

  But we both knew it was going to be different now: he was a foot taller than me and half again my weight, or more, and without the advantage of surprise I was like a toy to him. He was taking his time, grinning to his friends, caressing the knuckles of one hand with the palm of the other. He raised his fists and began circling, licking his lips, anticipating the pleasure he was going to take out of me.

  I flew into him with every bit of strength I had. His fist smashed into my face. Then I just stood there watching his other fist come at me, helpless to make myself move out of the way. I felt my nose crumble as if he’d hit an apple with a sledge hammer. The blood spurted out and I smelled a dry horrible dusty smell.

  “Get up you yellow-livered black bastard, you stinking coon nigger …” I hadn’t realized I was on the floor. I got to my feet and stumbled toward him. He hit me in the stomach and I collapsed. I was gasping for breath but no air was coming in and I was suffocating. Then suddenly I could taste air, and the figures in front of my eyes straightened out and became people again. I got up and went for him. He was methodically hitting me over and over again, landing four to every one of my punches, but they weren’t hurting me any more, they were just dull thuds against my body. Then his fist was beating down on the top of my head like a club. Someone shouted, “Don’t hit ‘im on the head, Jen. Y’can’t hurt a nigger ‘cept below the forehead.” He kept pounding me and I felt myself slipping to the floor again. I grabbed his shirt with one hand to keep myself from falling so I could hit him in the face with my other hand. I had to stay on my feet and keep hitting him, nothing else mattered, and I was glad to trade being hit ten times by him for the joy of feeling my fist smash into his face just once. I hung on and kept hitting him and hitting and hitting….

  A guy named O’Brien, from my barracks, was holding a wet cloth against my face. “You’ll be okay,” he said. “The bleeding’s stopped.”

  We were outside. I was propped up against the side of the PX. It was very quiet. Another guy was there. Miller. They were part of the group that always avoided trouble with Jennings. He smiled. “You might feel better to know that you got in your licks. I think you closed one of his eyes and you definitely broke his nose. He’s wearing it around his left ear.” I started to laugh but a shock of pain seared my lips. My head was pounding like it was still being hit. I opened my mouth carefully to ask how long I’d been out.

  O’Brien said, “Take it easy.” He grinned and showed me the cloth he was wiping my face with. “You ripped his shirt when you fell and you had part of it in your hand. You had a death grip on it even after you went out.”

  They walked me back to the barracks. Sergeant Williams was waiting in the doorway. He shook his head in disgust. “Very smart! Well, get over to the infirmary with Jennings.” He walked into his bedroom.

  I had sent Jennings to the infirmary. What beautiful news. Gorgeous! Miller and O’Brien were waiting to take me there. I shook my head and thanked them. I wasn’t going to give Jennings the satisfaction of seeing me in the infirmary, not if my nose fell off entirely.

  Lights were out but on the way to my bunk some of the guys stopped me and told me that when I’d fallen off Jennings he was starting to stomp me but Miller and O’Brien had stepped in and pulled him away. I realized that I’d broken the barracks into two groups: the haters, and the guys in the middle who didn’t care enough to take sides or who didn’t want to get involved. It had never occurred to me that some might swing over to my side. But when Miller and O’Brien saw that I was down and Jennings was still kicking me they had to get involved, and say, “Hey, wait a minute. This is ridiculous. Nobody’s that bad.”

  I got into bed and it was delicious. I tried to turn over on my stomach but the bruises were murder. Still, as much as I hurt, as awful as it had been, the worst pain wasn’t so bad that I wouldn’t do it again for the dignity I got from hitting back.

  Jennings had beaten me unconscious and hurt me more than I’d hurt him, but I had won. He was saying, “God made me better than you,” but he lost the argument the minute he had to use his fists to prove it. All he’d proven is that he was physically stronger than me, but that’s not what we were fighting over.

  I’d never been so tired in my life, but I couldn’t sleep. I hated myself for those weeks of sneaking around trying to avoid trouble. I’d been insane to imagine there was anything I could do to make a Jennings like me. I hadn’t begun to understand the scope of their hatred. I was haunted by that voice yelling “Y’can’t hurt ‘im ‘cept below the forehead.” My God, if they can believe that then they don’t even know what I am. The difference they see is so much more than color. I’m a whole other brand of being to them.

  There was so much to think about. How long would I have gone on not knowing the world was made up of haters, guys in the middle, Uncle Toms … I couldn’t believe I was going to spend the rest of my life fighting with people who hate me when they don’t even know me. But I kept hearing that voice and I knew I’d hear it again, out of another mouth, from another face, but spouting the same ignorance. I tried to stay awake to think it out, but my head was throbbing and the room began tilting to the left, then the right….

  … “Come on, Davis. Out of the sack.” Sergeant Williams was leaning over me, tilting the bed. “I told you to go to the infirmary last night. You’re a damned fool. I’m putting you on sick call this morning and you will report over there immediately after Mess. That’s an order.” Everybody else was outside for morning muster. I’d slept right through reveille.

  I looked across the mess hall. Jennings had a strip of tape across his nose and his left eye was so swollen that he wouldn’t be opening it for a week. The guys were buzzing and pointing at us and I made three trips back to the food counter for things I didn’t want, just so that he could see me with no tape on my face, practically dancing there, as though I’d been to a health farm all month.

  I had been drafted into the army to fight, and I did. We were loaded with Southerners and Southwesterners who got their kicks out of needling me, and Jennings and his guys never let up. I must have had a knockdown, drag-out fight every two days and I was getting pretty good with my fists. I had scabs on my knuckles for the first three months in the army. My nose was broken again and getting flatter all the time. I fought clean, dirty, any way I could win. They were the ones who started the fights and I didn’t owe them any Queensberry rules. It always started the same way: a wise guy look, a sneer—once they knew how I’d react, they were constantly maneuvering me into more fights. To them it was sport, entertainment, but for me the satisfaction which I had first derived diminished each time, until it was just a tiresome chore I had to perform. Somebody would say something and my reaction would be, oh, hell, here we go again. But I had to answer them. Invariably, I’d walk away angrier than when the fight had started. Why should I have to keep getting my face smashed? Why should I have to fight to break even? Why did I always have to prove what no white man had to prove?

  I kept in touch with my father and Will by phone. They’d tried doing a double, but all their material was geared to three people, so eventually they put a girl in the act. Then for a while they had a roller skater named Joe Smythe working with them. “We’re makin’ ends meet, Poppa. They ain’t what you’d call huggin’ and kissin’ but we’re gettin’ by killin’ time ‘til the day you come home. So do your job in the army and then get back as fast as you can.” I never bothered to tell them what my job in the army was exactly.

  The guy in front of me finished with the wash basin and as I moved forward, a big Texan grabbed me by the T-shirt and yanked me back so hard that I stumbled clear across the room, hit the wall, and fell down.

  “What’s that for?”

  He drawled, “Where I come from niggers stand in the back of the line.”

  I got up, gripped my bag of toilet articles and with all the strength I had, hit him in the mouth with it. The force and shock knocked him down. I stood over him, fists ready. But he sat on
the floor making no attempt to get up. Blood was trickling out of his mouth. He wiped it away with his towel, then looked up at me. “But you’re still a nigger.”

  Sergeant Williams was standing in the doorway. He motioned for me to follow him to his room and closed the door. “Sit down, Davis.” He offered me a cigarette and I took it. “That’s not the way to do it, son. You can’t beat people into liking you!”

  What the hell was he talking about? Or maybe I knew. The moment I’d heard, “But you’re still a nigger,” I’d known that this was not the way to fight.

  “Okay, you’ve punched your way across the camp. What’ve you proven? Have you stopped the insults? After you beat them up did they respect you any more?”

  “Look, Sergeant, I’m not bucking for camp boxing team, but when a guy insults me what should I do, curtsy and tell him thanks?”

  “You’ve got to fight a different way, a way that you can win something lasting. You can’t hope to change a man’s ideas except with another, better idea. You’ve got to fight with your brain, Sammy, not your fists.”

  It seemed as though I passed the Texan a hundred times each day, and I was haunted by that mocking voice telling me, “But you’re still a nigger.” He never said another word to me, but his eyes were saying it in the way they passed over me—as though I wasn’t there.

  We finished Basic and took our physicals for overseas duty. I was rejected because of an athletic heart. The doctor explained, “A lot of people have them and live long, useful lives. If you get enough sleep and don’t overtax yourself, you’ll be fine.” I applied twice more and was turned down each time for the same reason.

  I didn’t qualify for any of the army’s specialist schools where I might have bettered myself. My lack of education closed everything to me. They didn’t know what to do with me so somebody sent down an order, “Put him through Basic again,” probably hoping that by the time I came out I’d be somebody else’s problem. When I came out I was sent right back again, like a shirt that hadn’t been done right. Four times.

  I was depressed and disgusted with myself. Outside a club or a theater I was totally unequipped for the world, just another uneducated laborer doing every lousy job in the camp.

  I was on latrine duty and I passed Sergeant Williams’ room. The door was open and I saw him stretched out on his bed, reading. He must have had a hundred books in there. “Are these your books, Sergeant? I mean, do you own them all?”

  “Yes. Would you like to read one?”

  I shrugged. I wanted to but I’d never read a book in my life and I was afraid of picking something totally ridiculous and making a fool of myself.

  Sergeant Williams closed his book and sat up. “You’ll get a lot more out of them than you do from those comic books you read.”

  He chose a book and gave it to me. “Start with this one. You may not enjoy it right away but stick with it.”

  It was The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. I began reading it early that evening. After taps, I went into the latrine where the lights stayed on and sat on the floor reading until after midnight. When I got off duty the next day I bought a pocket dictionary at the PX and started the book from the beginning again, doing my reading in isolated places so people wouldn’t see me looking up words.

  When I’d finished it I gave it back to Sergeant Williams and we discussed it. He handed me three more and told me in what order to read them and we had long discussions about each one as I finished it. He took a book from his shelves, The Complete Works of Shakespeare. I looked at him. “You have to be kidding with that. Now you’re going too far. I mean, I never spent a day in school in my life.”

  His voice had a slight edge to it. “I never said you should be ashamed of no schooling. But it’s not something to be proud of, either.”

  He gave me Carl Sandburg’s books about Lincoln, books by Dickens, Poe, Mark Twain, and a history of the United States. I read Cyrano de Bergerac, entranced by the flair of the man; by the majesty of speeches I read aloud in a whisper, playing the role, dueling in dance steps around the latrine; imagining myself that homely, sensitive man, richly costumed in knee breeches, plumed hat, a handkerchief tucked into my sleeve, a sword in my hand. I feasted on the glory of the moment when, making good his threat, he drove the actor from the stage, and, as the audience shouted for their money back, tossed them his last bag of gold and admitted to Le Bret, “Foolish? Of course. But such a magnificent gesture.” And it was. Glorious! I put my hand in my pocket, and, clutching a fistful of silver I slipped out into the night, sword in hand, to drive the actor from the stage. Then, as fops and peasants alike shouted for their money back I bowed and hurled my handful of coins into the air. They landed, clanging against the side of the barracks. A light went on. A voice yelled, “Corporal of the guard.” I ran like hell.

  The more education Sergeant Williams gave me, through his books and our discussions, the greater a hunger I developed for it. When I ran out of his books I found others at the Post Library and then reread the ones he had.

  6

  As I got offstage at the Service Club, a fellow standing in the wings came over to me. “That was one hell of a show you just did. Will you come out front and have a drink with me?” He offered his hand. “My name is George M. Cohan, Jr.”

  We sat down together and he said, “You’ve heard about the big show every camp’s going to be doing for the inter-camp competition? Well, with all the stuff you know and with my dad’s special material, which I know backwards, I’ll bet we could get that assignment. You know as well as I do that all the guys who’ll be trying for it will just be using stuff out of the Special Services books. But with us writing our own, something fresh, we couldn’t miss. Whatya think?”

  “Well, naturally, I’d love to do it.”

  “Great. The General has the say. As long as I know you want to try for it with me, I’ll make an appointment to see him about it.”

  He told me, a few days later, that the General would let us do an audition at the Officers’ Club. Using a few pros we found around camp and a few semi-pros, we put together a small scale version of what we had in mind. I did an impression of Frank Sinatra that night, with the bow tie and the corny business of him being so weak and skinny that he had to hold onto the microphone. The General sent for us as soon as we’d finished and told us to be in his office the next afternoon. He wanted to hear the rest of our ideas.

  A WAC Captain, his adjutant, sat in on the meeting and as we described our show she found enough stumbling blocks to build a wall around the entire camp and she said she’d let us know in about a week.

  Outside, George said, “Well, she’s the power as far as our show is concerned. We’ve got to butter her up, or she’ll kill it entirely.”

  We dreamed up excuses to go to her office and always brought along bunches of flowers that we’d picked. George and I became as well known in Headquarters as the General. The Captain was getting to like us and it seemed as if she was swinging over to our side, so we doubled our efforts.

  I stopped off to leave a bundle of new material we’d worked out. She said, “Tell me something about yourself, Davis. You were a professional performer?”

  “Yes, Captain. Since I was three.”

  “Where did you perform?”

  As I spoke she leaned back in her chair, listening to every word I was saying, waving away the clerks who occasionally tried to speak to her. Her interest triggered a stream of show talk and “the old days” poured out of me, until I began to feel like an old vaudevillian.

  She smiled, “When I heard your ideas in the General’s office they seemed so professional that frankly I doubted you’d be able to execute them. But now that I understand your background, and from what I know of George, I’m convinced you and he are more than up to the job. I’d like you two to work out a budget for scenery, props, and costumes and drop it off here as soon as you can.” She walked me to the door, shook hands with me and smiled. “I probably shouldn’t say this bu
t you boys have quite an edge over the others. We should have the official word for you by Friday.”

  Leaving, I felt like doing a Fred Astaire number, tap dancing across the tops of the long row of desks leading to the front door. I was a specialist. Show business had given me something to offer the army.

  By Thursday afternoon when George and I left the Captain’s office after dropping off a two-pound box of candy, our final and most glorious effort, he, the Captain, and I were almost buddies, and as the door closed behind us George sighed, “All we can do now is wait and hope. Keep your fingers crossed.”

  As I started toward my barracks, a couple of Headquarters clerks called out to me. One of them, a PFC with a heavy Southern drawl, smiled, “The Captain told us to take you to meet her over at Building 2134.”

  I grinned, “Her wish is my command.” I walked with them, wondering why she hadn’t just told them to bring me back to the office. Maybe she wanted me to look at a warehouse of props and scenery they’d used in other shows. We’d gone about half a mile, to a semi-deserted part of the camp, to barracks that weren’t in use. I followed the PFC into 2134. One of the men closed the barracks door behind us. They shoved me into the latrine. Four others were in there, obviously waiting for us.

  “Sorry, nigger, but your lady love won’t be here.”

  “What is this?”

  “This ain’t nothin’ but a little meeting some of us in the office thought we oughta have with you.” They took hold of my arms. The PFC spit in my face. I tried to reach up to wipe it away but I couldn’t move my arms. He saw me trying to reach for it. “Oh, I’m sorry. Here, I’ll wipe it for you.” He slapped me across the face, then backhanded me.

  The seven of them crowded around me. The PFC was breathing heavily and a vein in his forehead was pulsing quickly. “We’ve been watching you makin’ eyes at the Captain for a week now, and we decided we oughta have a little talk with you.”