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“Death of an American (Sammy’s Story)” was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 69th Short Fiction Contest, and is published with the consent of the author.
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Death of an American (Sammy’s Story)
by Tucker May
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…..Once there was a boy born with so much talent and so much smarts that the world couldn’t handle him. He was too much of both. When he sang, whole neighborhoods gathered. He was a magnet. Smart as a whip, too. And when he smiled, it made grown ladies look away. He was a thing, I’ll tell you that.
…..The world noticed just like I did. Suddenly all kinds of folks started coming around asking after little Sammy. Too much, too fast, I said. Let him keep on in the church choir. Nobody ever listened to me, though. And they swept him away, my little Sammy, with their cars and their money.
…..He got big and it happened fast. Turns out everybody did like to cha cha cha. Don’t take me wrong, he made good music. Broke my heart. But they didn’t know Sammy. He was young. He was still too young.
…..He became so much more than himself. Hope and beauty was baked into his music from the bottom up and people could hear it just as plain as anything. People said to me, time and again they said, “He lifts us, he’s it! He’s it, mama!” I missed my baby, though. I worried.
…..And then it happened. Sammy got shot and killed. At a motel, it happened. The man who told me was in a police uniform. He didn’t care. Just a piece of information he had to say out loud. Collapsing my world, casual like. Sammy had sang it all: this is a mean world to try and live in all by yourself.
…..They say that Sammy was asking for it. That he was drunk or something else and that he assaulted a white lady. No. No way. I don’t believe it, not my Sammy. I don’t care about the police report. I don’t care what the news has to say. I know this place. I live in America. Sammy was killed because he was a black man who got some money and tried to use it for something.
…..You know what happened to my baby out in L.A.? The same thing as happens in Chicago every day. And Boston and Little Rock and any place you can point your finger on the map. My Sammy was trying to change things. He was trying to make things better for people who make music, just like him. All he wanted was for the world to be fair. And now he’s dead.
…..You know them record companies. What they get up to. They knew that Sammy was organizing against them. He was trying to get artists what they deserve. And them white suits knew it. I can’t prove nothing, nobody can. But he winds up dead right when he starts organizing against the record companies? Please.
…..Or it was that Klein man. Yeah. It could have been that Klein man. Heartless. Everybody knew how bad he was. How can you even own another man’s music anyways? To own another man’s art is to own his soul. White devil. Klein ain’t sing shit. Sammy did! Somebody made my baby’s death happen, I’m telling you. And I heard enough about ‘conspiracy’ this and ‘conspiracy’ that. Ain’t no conspiracy if it happened. My baby is dead. I saw the body. Beat all to hell. Gunshot? He died from a gunshot? You wanna tell me that? Then why is he all roughed up? Somebody beat his head in after a bullet to the chest? No! Just no.
…..I’m losing myself now, I’m sorry. This is a story I’m telling and I’m getting worked up. Sammy was on top of the world, you know. Top ten hits, I’m talking. Real money. He was sending home bunches. Let the good times roll, he sang. And maybe he might have got caught up in some of it himself, maybe drugs or whatever you wanna say, but he was only just human just like the rest of us. God bless him.
…..That night. The night he left us. He and some girl went to a restaurant. It was spelled out clear as day by witnesses: she left with him. She chose to leave with him. Sammy always had a way with the fairer kind. He was out in the land of lights with a wad of cash in his pocket and he found himself a white woman and it got him killed. Familiar headline, I guess.
…..They went to a motel. Here’s where it all stops fitting. You ask me, she was trying to rob him. Where was the money, huh? It was gone before the cops got there, that’s all we know. They say she ran out in a hurry, that she didn’t mean to grab up Sammy’s clothes alongside her own. But then where’d the money go? Wasn’t in Sammy’s slacks at the end of the night. The people at the restaurant, the motel clerk — they all saw Sammy with wads of money. Then it was gone and he was left dead. You know what? I think she had an accomplice. She took that money, passed it off to somebody else, then called the cops to put the frame on Sammy. And while she was doing that, he was left in his drawers trying to get help from the motel manager and instead he got a bullet. That white woman might not have pulled the trigger, but she sure as anything got him killed. Just because he got dumb and flashed around his money in a strange city.
…..And let me ask you this: what would you do? If you came out the bathroom and saw some girl had grabbed your cash and took off? She made off with his pants! What would you do? Sammy ran down to the motel office and started banging on the door. He asked for help. And I get it, I see how that is. A grown man beating down your door in his britches in the middle of the night. That lady was right to be scared, but did she have to go and shoot him? She killed him for asking where that girl had went? That’s not right. That don’t add up. Not if you got a brain in your head. Something else is going on here. But we’ll never get to know. I’ll never get to know. And it’ll never bring him back anyways.
…..I wish they hadn’t told me his last words. Is that strange to say? Not wanting to know your child’s last words? But they hang over me now. “You shot me, lady.” That’s all he said. “You shot me, lady.” Then he was gone. He died. Ain’t that just the worst? “You shot me, lady.” No happy-ever-afters in this story, I guess. Another Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody, Sammy sang. Oh. Oh, I miss him.
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Tucker May is a self-published novelist with two forthcoming works toward the end of 2025 and beginning of 2026: Death of a Billionaire and The Lemon House Murders. He also publishes mystery short stories in micro-chapters on social media. Find those on Instagram, Bluesky and Facebook at Tucker May Mysteries. He lives in Pasadena, California with his partner Barbara and their cat, Principal Spittle.
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Click here to read the 2005 Jerry Jazz Musician interview with Sam Cooke biographer Peter Guralnick
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“My Vertical Landscape,” Felicia A. Rivers’ winning story in the 69th Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest
Click here to read more short fiction published on Jerry Jazz Musician
Click here to read The Sunday Poem
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Click here for details about the upcoming 69th Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest
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