Sweetness (16 page)

“That day was when I knew Walter would one day play in the NFL,” said Brazile. “When you watched him run with the ball in that game, it was clear he was special.”

Without drastically changing Eddie’s role, Hill increasingly turned toward Walter. The two backs substituted for each other, slapping hands as one entered and the other exited. By late in the season they were splitting time until, before the game at Mississippi Valley State on November 20, Hill decided he would finally go with the all-Payton starting backfield. “It just made sense,” said Hill. “They both ran hard, they both blocked well, and they both were lethal catching screens out of the backfield. In practice I would pit them against each other as motivation, but they didn’t need it. They were motivated without me.”

The game took place on a bright and windy afternoon in Itta Bena, Mississippi, and if spectators believed they were witnessing some sort of sports sibling history, little was discussed. “Nobody gave it much thought,” said Eddie. “Even we didn’t. We both felt we were good enough to start together, so it was something we’d expected. When you expect something, it’s not shocking or overly memorable.” On the Devils’ dirt-and-rock-coated field, Jackson State won 17–7, with Eddie running for his tenth touchdown of the season to take hold of the SWAC scoring lead. Walter’s longest run was a twenty-yard burst up the middle on the second play of the game. He also kicked a seventeen-yard field goal and two extra points. Had Ole Miss or Mississippi State started brothers at running back, the media crush would have been overwhelming. The
Clarion-Ledger
marked the Payton pairing by not even mentioning it in the following day’s paper, and misspelling Payton (as “Peyton”) five different times.

“It was never surprising,” said Eddie. “Just really pathetic.”

The Tigers won their final two games of the season, finishing with a 9-1-1 record (mere percentage points behind Grambling for the conference title) and sealing Hill’s anointment as the SWAC Coach of the Year. Eddie led the team with 799 rushing yards, and Walter followed with 651 more. He also kicked three field goals and thirteen extra points.

“Walter spent his first year showing us how good he could be,” said Hill, “and the next three years turning into a legend.”

CHAPTER 7

SOUL

THERE ARE NICE BELTS AND THERE ARE UGLY BELTS. AND AT JACKSON STATE College, there was Mary Jones’ extra-special belt.

The bullet one.

Yes, you read that correctly. Somewhere within Mississippi’s capital city in the early 1970s, there was an eighteen-year-old female student from Tunica, Mississippi, with short straight hair, brown eyes, long legs, an engaging personality, and a belt featuring the bullets of an M16 assault rifle.

Jones purchased the accessory at a vintage clothing store in Oklahoma during a field trip several years earlier, when she served as a majorette in the Rosa Fort High School marching band. “To be honest, the bullets were replicas,” said Jones. “But they looked real, and the belt was neat—brown, with these gold bullets covering it. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to buy it.”

Jones arrived on Jackson State’s campus in May 1972. Fresh off of high school graduation, she enrolled in summer school and asked Earl Dishman, a pal from back home, to drive her to campus. “He had my clothes in his car, and he dropped me off and said he’d be back in a few hours,” Jones recalled. “Well, Earl had some friends on the other side of Jackson and he decided to stay with them. I didn’t see him for a week.”

Jones found herself stuck in wardrobe purgatory. She had a dorm room to live in and cafeteria food to eat, but no spare clothing. “So every day for my first entire week on campus I wore the same thing—the same jumpsuit, the same bullet belt,” she said. “People started looking at me and saying, ‘Hey, Bullet!’ They never called me Mary again. Always Bullet.”

Before long, Mary “Bullet” Jones became famous at Jackson State for two things: her ubiquitous belt and her out-of-this-galaxy dancing skills.

Beginning when she was a little girl, Bullet emulated her mother, Mary Francis Jones, as she boogied around the house, arms waving, rump shaking. By the time she reached Jackson State, Bullet was as dazzling a dance-floor practitioner as many had ever seen. “Boy, could she groove,” said Coolidge Anderson, editor of the
Blue and White Flash
. “Weren’t many people on campus who worked it like Bullet did.”

Well, there was one. If Bullet was Jackson State’s Ginger Rogers, its Fred Astaire was Walter Payton. Throughout a freshman year noteworthy for gridiron excellence, Payton generated equally rave reviews for his improvisational dance talents. Wherever one looked, he could find Walter dancing. Inside classrooms. Within the corridors of Sampson Hall. Standing in line for lunch. On the bus rides to away games. “He danced just like Rerun from
What’s Happening!!
” said Jackie Slater, an offensive lineman who went on to a twenty-year NFL career. “The moves were crazy and wild and extremely athletic.”

“There was a porch in front of our field house, and as we were getting ready to play the football games Walter would stand there and dance, dance, dance, dance,” said Porter Taylor, a quarterback. “Coach Hill would walk by, take a look at Walter moving all around and say, ‘OK, we’re ready.’ ”

At the start of his sophomore year of college, Payton’s primary goal was to lead the Tigers to the SWAC title. With Eddie having graduated and playing professionally in Canada, Walter knew Jackson State’s hopes rested largely on his shoulders. He spent much of the summer in Jackson on the banks of the Pearl River, running through its quicksand-like terrain and envisioning glorious Saturday afternoons inside Memorial Stadium. “If you have to come under control to make a cut, the pursuit will catch you,” Payton once said of running along the river. “In the sand, you have to move one leg before the other is planted. It makes all your muscles work. Sometimes when I’m done even my neck will be aching.”

Because Hill was college football’s Richard Nixon when it came to adhering to rules, he had his entire team spend the majority of the summer at Jackson State, violating multiple NCAA regulations by practicing up to three times per day.

Yet unbeknownst to the Tigers coach, the sly back wasn’t merely pondering pigskin. Like nearly all Jackson State students, Walter was a rabid fan of
24 Karat Black Gold
, a half-hour television program that aired every Saturday morning on Jackson’s NBC affiliate, channel 3.

The program’s concept was simple and, in the age of
American Bandstand
and
Soul Train
, unoriginal: Invite a large number of local black high school and college students to a television studio and have them dance to the latest hits. “That was it,” said Lee King,
24 Karat Black Gold
’s creator and a onetime radio engineer for James Brown. “Our show was eighty percent dancing, and the other twenty percent was videos and appearances by regional and national artists. It worked so well because it was an outlet for African-Americans in Mississippi. Their ambitions were at a low level because they didn’t have a lot of recreational things to do in the area. So when our show came out, it was their
Bandstand
.”

Without telling Hill (who would have certainly objected), on a Tuesday evening in early September 1972, Walter and a couple of friends drove to the WLBT studio on South Jefferson Street, where auditions were being held for the new season. The line stretched down the block and around the corner—hundreds of young blacks in search of stardom. “We had to introduce ourselves, say what college we attended, what our major was,” said Jones. “Then we formed a
Soul Train
line and danced. If we were good, they invited us back the following week. There was no salary, but we didn’t care. It wasn’t about that.”

“I was from Augusta, Georgia, so I had no idea who Walter was,” said King. “But he auditioned with this freestyle dance that was crazy and different. He had a great way of carrying himself, too. He radiated something unique.”

The tapings took place on the first Monday of every month—four episodes shot in one exhausting evening. Though he often walked onto the dance floor straight from football practice, muscles aching and knees throbbing, as soon as the TV cameras rolled and the sounds of Earth, Wind & Fire or the Jackson 5 blared across the room, Walter came to life. His wardrobe was, even for the times, outrageous—bright purple cutoff shirts, baggy velvet pants, tight jeans, some sort of fedora-esque hat. The popular dance style of the time was called “Pop ‘n’ Lock,” a precursor to break dancing that incorporated fluid and wavy isolated movements with tight robotic illusions. His go-to move was the Centipede, slinking to the floor and moving his body in wavelike motions. “Oh, he was an excellent dancer,” said Jones. “Walter used to inject a lot of the techniques they did in football . . . some of the calisthenics and exercises. He was really flexible with his body; more so than the rest of us.”

Because the Tiger football program was still finding itself, Payton the running back had yet to establish himself as a household name in Jackson. Payton the dancer, on the other hand, was huge. “The show aired every week, so people became familiar with us,” said Jones. “Throughout the fall and spring, we turned into celebrities. Kids would yell out when we drove by and people would stop and ask about the dances. It was thrilling.”

Like many who met Payton, King developed affection for the boy. He was goofy and quirky and always messing around with someone. At the time King owned a beautiful white Cadillac, and Walter said he’d like to repay him for the dancing opportunity by taking the vehicle to the car wash. King accepted the offer on multiple occasions, never giving much thought to the fact that his car would be gone for three hours a pop. “When I scolded him about it taking too long, Walter would give me some story about the vacuum not working,” said King. “Well, one day someone took me to where Walter was supposed to be cleaning, and I caught him with a bunch of females in the car.”

Midway through the academic year, King announced that
24 Karat Black Gold
was affiliating itself with the first-ever
Soul Train
National Championship Dance-Off. Throughout the country, each state would host its own competition, with the winning couples flying to Los Angeles to appear on
Soul Train
and vie for the title of America’s Best Dancers. At the time, Payton and Jones were teamed on
Black Gold
with fairly mediocre partners. “So Walter came up to me one day and said, ‘How about entering the
Soul Train
contest together?’ ” Jones said. “ ‘I really think we can win this thing if we team up.’ ” For the next three weeks the two met in a second-floor room of Jackson State’s student union building and danced until their toes blistered. “We had forty-fives and LPs, and we practiced for endless hours,” Jones said. “We expected to win.”

The first round of the competition was held at the College Park Auditorium on Lynch Street. Hundreds of couples took to the floor as the judges cruised the room, tapping out those who didn’t make the cut. Along with forty-nine other couples, Walter and Mary survived the first week, then lasted again as the total was reduced to twenty-five, and then again to a mere ten. The championship round was held on a Sunday, ten couples dancing for the right to appear on one of black America’s most popular television programs. “I’d never left Mississippi in my life,” said Jones. “I’d never even been on an airplane. So the possibility was breathtaking.”

The ten couples were pared down to five, then three. Walter gazed at Mary. Mary gazed at Walter. They locked eyes, knowing to ignore the judges and just move. Finally, the music stopped. The couple looked around, and nobody was left. “I was overcome with joy, and so was Walter,” said Jones. “To be chosen to represent the entire state of Mississippi! What an honor!”

By the time Walter and Mary flew to Los Angeles, it was the summer of 1973. The local radio station, WOKJ, presented both students with plane tickets and five hundred dollars in spending money. (“Five hundred dollars!” laughs Jones. “I couldn’t believe it.”) They stayed at the Hyatt in Los Angeles, and were given tours of Hollywood and Beverly Hills. Upon arriving at
Soul Train
’s studio, they met Don Cornelius, the famed deep-voiced host and producer.

The show was taped the night after they arrived. Couples from across the nation danced away, until fifty were whittled down to thirty, and thirty were whittled down to fifteen, and fifteen were whittled down to two. The victors would be gifted two brand-new olive green Dodge Chargers—“and we really wanted those cars,” Jones said.

Walter wore jeans with wide legs, a cutoff shirt that revealed his muscular stomach, and Gene Simmons–esque platform heels. Atop his head was an apple cap, a style staple for black men in the early 1970s. He and Mary danced as well as they ever had. So, unfortunately, did the couple from Louisiana. “Mississippi and Louisiana were the last two standing,” said Jones. “They were just a little bit better than we were.”