Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (32 page)

“Sammy, this talent you speak of is undeniably an extraordinary gift—I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you on television—but as to why God gave it to you in particular, I can’t tell you. Nor can I tell you why He kept you on earth. At best my conclusions would not serve you well. The real answers will only be found within yourself.”

“You don’t think maybe you could give me a little hint?”

“Do you want answers like ‘God saved you because you are one of His children’?”

“I keep thinking maybe He’s trying to tell me something. Did I do something wrong, did I let Him down somewhere along the line? And if the accident was a hint that there’s something I’m not doing right, then I’m not anxious to wait around for Number Two.”

“Sammy, you look upon your accident as a warning or a threat. I can only speak to you as a Jew and interpret it according to our philosophy. We don’t believe that goodness should stem from threat of punishment. We worship God in love, not in fear. In the Talmud, which represents many centuries of Jewish thinking, it is written ‘Whom the Lord loveth He correcteth.’ Therefore, ‘Should a man see suffering come upon him let him scrutinize his actions.’ We believe that a ‘warning’ such as you have had comes not to punish you for wrongs you have done but to shake you up a little and perhaps stimulate some spiritual progress—exactly the kind of thinking you’re doing now. You’re wondering what you might have done wrong. Turn it slightly. Have you done as well as you might have with what God gave you to work with? We believe that man is made in God’s image and therefore is endowed with unlimited potential for goodness and greatness. Thus, his most important responsibility is to live up to whatever is within him to be. But only you can know your potential. Only you have the knowledge of where you have succeeded and where you have failed, where you’ve quit when you shouldn’t have. Only you can know if you have been
remiss, just as it is only for you to know how good or even how great you might be. All you should be concerned with is, are you falling short of what you might accomplish, what you might be?”

“Rabbi, do you know what the big shake-up is in this whole thing? Until I had this accident I never gave God much thought at all. I mean, I believed in Him but I’ve got to admit that religion was never exactly uppermost in my mind. But I’ll tell you something, I’ve got a mental picture of myself out on that highway that would scare an atheist into church. It was the most desperate floating-in-space kind of helplessness I ever knew when I fell to my knees and begged God not to let me go blind. Here I was turning to Him and I had no right to even hope He was listening.”

“So, do something about it. When you leave here give time to your religion, understand it, develop the faith that you have every reason to have.”

“Can I be totally honest with you? On one hand I’m scared to death I’d better find an answer, I’d love to have a complete and unswerving faith in God, and I know what it would mean to me to have it. But on the other hand, down deep at the level you don’t even want to admit to yourself, I know that if I had it to do all over again, as much as I’d like to have religion, I’d still get a bigger kick out of ‘making it’ and having the kind of life I was just starting to have. Do you know what I mean?”

“Certainly. Candy always tastes better than nourishing foods, until we develop an appreciation for the nourishing foods. When that happens you’ll find you can take the candy or leave it.”

“How do you figure I’m going to find your kind of answers in another church?”

“Sammy, we have no monopoly on the truths of life. The Talmud states: ‘The righteous of all nations are worthy of immortality.’ There are many mountain tops and all of them reach for the stars.”

“That’s beautiful.” I grinned. “But you won’t tell me what I’ve been doing wrong with my life, right?”

“You asked for a hint. Here’s the best I can offer: if throughout a man’s lifetime he only breathes the air and enjoys the sun, there will be no sign of him. If he plants a tree—that will remain. ‘The greatest use of life is to spend it on something which will outlast it.’ ”

“What’s your way?”

He smiled. “For one thing, trying to help you to help yourself.”

“Ah hah! In other words you aren’t gonna give me any answers,
right? A Jewish fella ain’t gonna help a poor colored fella who’s laying in bed, an eye missing, with wondering what the answer is. I ask you a question and you give me a do-it-yourself kit, right? Okay, I’ll fix you. I’ll figure it out myself just to show you I don’t need you….” He was helping me already.

It was a strange sensation to know that a flashlight was shining into my eye but I couldn’t see it. Dr. Hull snapped off the light and smiled.

“Do I get the new eye soon?”

“The socket is too sore for us to put in anything as large as an eye, but we can begin preparing you for it. During the operation we set a little plastic disc in your socket, about the size of a thumbnail. Your new eye will eventually rest on that. But first we’ll use a much smaller plastic ball to accustom you to having a foreign substance in there.

“Don’t be surprised to find that you have no control over the lid. It’ll flop closed because its muscles were shattered. Eventually it will be held open by the force of the large plastic eye, but until you build up to that you’ll need to wear the patch. The drooping lid won’t be attractive.”

“Let me ask you something about my good eye. I don’t see as much as I expected I would.”

“There are two factors involved in vision: depth of focus and the area of sight. Try to think of the eyes as a pair of lenses. You understand how 3-D is based on the principle of two eyes looking at an object and giving it roundness? Well, you lose that roundness, or depth of focus, with only one eye. It will never be the same as before but it will be slightly better than it is now. However, the eye compensates. Your area of sight will, in a short time, begin to expand like a wide angle lens until eventually you’ll see more with one eye than you could when you had two but closed one.”

“Doc, I hate to sound like a starlet, but once I get the plastic eye and I take off the patch, what happens when I look to the side with my good eye? I won’t be able to make the false one look that way, too, will I? I mean it’ll just stare straight ahead?”

“In the beginning, yes. But in time you’ll train the outer muscles to move the plastic eye and you’ll be amazed at how much movement you’ll be able to get. As I told you a few days ago, the time
will come when only you will know that you do not have two natural eyes.”

As Dr. Hull neared the door to leave, a nurse came skidding into the room and collided with him. “Oh! Excuse me, doctor!” She was looking past him to me. “It’s
Frank Sinatra
! He’s on his way up!”

I could hear the excitement in the halls accelerating until it was almost a roar. Nurses were running from room to room gasping, “He’s here, in the hospital! Frank Sinatra!” They were going out of their minds, with dropping thermometers and grabbing for lipsticks….

Frank was standing in the doorway, smiling. “Hi’ya, Charley.” He came in, flipped his hat onto a chair and looked at me, carefully. “You’re going to be all right.” He said it emphatically, like he’d just gotten the word from “upstairs.” He embraced my father and Will. The nurse was rooted to the floor, staring at him, so flustered that she didn’t think to give him a chair. He smiled at her. “H’ya, honey.” She nodded like a drunk, with the grin and the glazed eyes.

He pulled up a chair and straddled it, arms resting against its back. “Well, what’s happening with the eye?”

“I’ll have to wear a patch until the socket heals, then I get a new eye.” I shook a cigarette out of a pack and held up my lighter, but the flame missed the end of the cigarette. When I finally got it lit Frank smiled. “You’re full of little party tricks, Charley.”

“Stick around. For an encore I light my nose.”

He’d lit a cigarette, too, and was holding it cupped in the palm of his hand. “How long do the docs figure it’ll take you to straighten out?”

“They say maybe three months, but they’re not sure.”

“Have you still got the place in the Sunset Colonial?”

“Yeah. I’ve been keeping it.”

“Well, we’ve got to get you out of there. That’s for openers. You can’t live there any more. You should have a house.”

“I tried to get one, but it’s …”

“You’ll have a house in the hills where you can get some quiet and still not be in the Yukon.” He looked over at my father. “I’ll be in touch with you on it.” He turned back to me. “We’ll get you something small, a rental until you know exactly what you want. You should have a couple of guys living with you until you’re on your feet. Do you know when you’re leaving here?”

“A few days, I think.”

“Why don’t you come out to my place at the Springs and spend a couple of weeks with me? Hey, what the hell are you crying about?”

“Frank … I can’t tell you what it means to me for you to come here … I thought maybe the magazine thing….”

“So what else is new?”

“But …”

“Forget it, Charley. You don’t even have to mention it. Have you decided where you want to open?”

“Well, that Vegas money looks awfully good, but I’ve got a funny kind of a feeling about our first date. Herman Hover can only give us five thousand and though I hate to go for the short money, well, I’ve been thinking maybe we should go back to Ciro’s where it all began for us.”

“You’re definitely right. The important thing is to start strong, and in L.A. you’ll be home where you know you have friends around you. The Vegas money’ll still be there.” He looked across the room. Will nodded. “Meanwhile, Charley, get your health back. Rest, don’t rush.”

“I wish it was that simple. Let’s say it takes three months. By then, all this fantastic publicity I’m getting won’t mean beans—I’ll have blown all this momentum. On the other hand, obviously I can’t come back too early, coming on like I’m stumbling around for sympathy.”

“First of all you’ve got no choice. You wait until you’re ready! Secondly, don’t worry about the momentum. They’ll wait for you. The day you go back to work you’ll be as hot as you are today.”

“I wish I could believe that.”

He raised an eyebrow and half-smiled. “You want to talk about comebacks?”

He stood up and picked up his hat. “I’ll see you at the Springs.” He walked over to the bed and put his hand on my shoulder. “Relax. You’re going to be bigger than ever, Charley. Bigger than ever.”

Flash bulbs were popping all over the room and a guy with a newsreel camera was walking in close to the bed. I turned slightly so he’d get a good shot of the patch, and gave him a Charley Brave smile.

“Hey, is that the morning’s mail, Sammy?” He was pointing to
the three tables of letters in the corner of the room. “I hope you at least got some money in all those letters.”

“Have you read ‘em all?”

“Hey, fellas, I’ve only got one eye, remember?” It got a laugh.

“Sammy, is it true that Jeff Chandler offered you his eye?”

“Yes. Jeff offered a cornea for transplantation, and I understand that I’ve had nine other offers since then.”

“Why do you think Chandler offered to give you his eye?”

“He’s my friend, and that’s just the kind of a man he is.”

“Sammy, tell us your side of the story on you and Ava Gardner.” He winked. “I mean, confidentially.”

Everybody laughed. “There’s nothing to tell. It’s totally false. The guy who wrote it should win a prize for fiction. Like ten years in jail!”

“You mean there’s nothing to it?”

“Baby, will you please take another look at this kisser of mine? Now you
know
I ain’t about to get
that
lucky!”

“Isn’t Frank Sinatra a friend of yours? How’d he feel about it? I mean with her being his ex-wife?”

“He came to visit me yesterday.”

“Did he mention the story?”

“No. I brought it up but he wouldn’t even discuss it.”

“Isn’t that kinda strange?”

“No. To discuss it would be like saying there was a possibility it was true and that would conflict with his belief that if you have a friend then he’s your friend and you believe in him and that’s
it
. If he’d thought about me to the contrary he just wouldn’t have shown.”

“Have you heard that because of what happened to you the Cadillac people are redesigning their steering wheel? They’re inverting the thing that sticks up in the center.”

“Sammy, now that you’ve had almost a week to think about it what’s your feeling about what happened to you? Have you wondered, ‘Why me?’ ”

“Baby, all I can say is that God must have had his arms around me. He really did or I would have been killed. I understand there was an identical accident in Oregon just two days ago and everybody in both cars was killed instantly. So if there’s any ‘why me’ it can only be why did He let
me
live?”

“How do you think it’ll affect your career?”

“That’s entirely up to the public. If they still want me I’ll be there.” I pointed to the letters. “It’s gonna take me a long time to answer them all. In the meantime, you guys could do me a big favor if you’d mention how grateful I am for the fantastic support they’ve given me.”

“Y’mean the mail gave you something to lean on?”

“Baby, I can’t begin to describe what it’s like to have total strangers take the trouble to send little prayers and to tell you they’re rooting for you. I’m having all those letters bound in books ‘cause I don’t ever want to be without them. Anytime I feel unlucky I’ll just take them out and read how wrong I am.”

“Sammy, are you trying to tell us you feel lucky?”

“I hate to do the great movie cliché where the guy says, ‘I lost an eye, my face is scarred, my career is shot to hell but I’m lucky to be alive.’ I know it’s awfully cornball but I really mean it. This may sound ridiculous, but I’m beginning to think that as awful as it was maybe it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“How so?”

“Well, if you’ll pardon the expression, it opened my eyes.”

They were writing down every word. I was swinging.

When the room had cleared, I noticed Will standing in front of the window, and I was suddenly aware that he’d been there through the entire press conference. I had a mental picture of him looking at the reporters … but nobody had asked him anything. Okay, they were mostly interested in the accident, but we’d talked about the act and they hadn’t noticed him. Nor had I. He’d just been there in the corner, the forgotten man. Now he was looking out the window, his face expressionless and still except for a single muscle moving in his cheek. He didn’t know I was watching him and what I saw in that unguarded moment was completely unlike the man I’d known all my life. I’d seen many sides of him—serenity, stubbornness, his own kind of quiet arrogance, kindness, wisdom, all the facets—but never before had he appeared to be lost, almost helpless. Even during our worst days, when we’d Been locked out and hungry he’d been in control. I couldn’t stop watching him and for a moment I was afraid he’d catch me intruding on his privacy, but I turned away a second before he looked up and smiled. “I’m going downstairs for some coffee, Sammy. I’ll be back soon.”