Sweetness (17 page)

Walter and Mary left empty-handed.

“But the story of dancing with Walter,” said Mary, “has lasted me a lifetime.”

If Walter Payton tiptoed cautiously toward his freshman year of college, he barged in, shoulder first, as a sophomore.

Though he had enjoyed playing alongside his older brother in the Tigers backfield, Walter was his own man, in need of neither guidance nor sibling-provided protection. “At first I was glad to room with people I knew, but it was almost too much after a while,” he wrote in his autobiography of living with Eddie and Edward Moses as a freshman. “I began to wish that I’d roomed with strangers.”

With a year of school—and football—under his belt, Walter was more relaxed and confident. His roommates were now Rodney Phillips and Rickey Young, two young Tiger stars who shared Payton’s on-campus notoriety and were thrilled to have access to his deluxe stereo system with a
real
remote control. “He had powerful amps,” said Matthew Norman, a teammate, “and he’d try to knock the walls down with music.” Walter strolled campus with a smile glued to his face, exchanging high fives with teammates, offering causal nods to pretty women. He liked to fish with linebacker Robert Brazile in a nearby reservoir and stay up late gabbing with his pals in a common area of the residence hall. In his hands he often carried a wood slingshot, and when the spirit moved him he would pick up a rock and pluck unsuspecting pigeons. “Not to be mean,” said Taylor, the Tigers quarterback. “Just Walter being a big kid.”

Without Eddie, Walter could be himself without worrying about someone hovering over his shoulder. There was the dancing on
Black Gold
. There were the trips to the Penguin Restaurant, a little place just off of campus where, for a dollar fifty, Walter would buy two hot dogs, slather them in coleslaw and the Penguin’s special sauce, gobble them down, and sprint back to the dorm before Hill could catch him.

There were the women.

Back during his freshman orientation, Walter had been standing in a courtyard when he took notice of a pretty coed named Lorna Jones. A local girl who graduated from Jackson’s Wingfield High, Lorna was immediately taken with Payton’s kind eyes and humble disposition. “He wasn’t all that handsome, but he was very nice and very intelligent, even though he didn’t think of himself as smart,” said Jones. “He also had a shyness to him that was quite endearing.”

Unlike Walter, Lorna lived at home with her parents, both educators, both unflinchingly strict. Her mother, M. V. Manning Jones, refused to allow Lorna to stay out late or, heaven forbid, sleep elsewhere. Kissing boys was against the law. When Walter visited, the two could not be together in a room behind a closed door. “I had my own den, and we’d sit there, but we were never really alone,” said Lorna. “My dad would walk back and forth, back and forth.” Despite their mistrust of all members of the opposite sex, M. V. and Lawrence Jones liked their daughter’s boyfriend. He was polite and friendly, and came over frequently to help cook shrimp and stir chili. When he once needed to attend a certain award presentation, the Joneses even took Walter to JCPenney to buy a pair of shoes.

During Christmas break toward the end of 1971, Walter brought Lorna to Columbia to meet his parents. Because her family was so forbidding, Lorna was allowed to go only as long as her best friend, Patrice Turner, came along, and under the order that they return by evening’s end. In the shadow of the Payton Christmas tree, with Patrice hovering nearby, Walter handed Lorna a small box. Inside was a promise ring with, in her words, “an itty, itty, itty, bitty diamond.”

“That was a big thing,” said Lorna. “Back then you gave promise rings as a token of a serious relationship. We had real feelings for one another. I loved him.”

Walter majored in history as a freshman, compiling twenty-eight credits and earning a GPA between 2.0 and 2.5. He had spent endless hours studying alongside Lorna, who was passionate about her major, special education. During many of their conversations, Walter thought back to his days mentoring disabled children at Columbia High, as well as playing alongside a deaf high school teammate named Lee Bullock. He would end up switching his major to audiology, a branch of science that studies hearing, balance, and related disorders. He was, almost certainly, the nation’s only top-flight football player to focus on such a field. “He really cared about people,” Lorna said. “Studying with him and talking with him about special ed were great moments. We shared a bond.”

As sophomores, however, the dynamic shifted. With Eddie’s departure, Walter was thrust into the role of football (and dance) superstar, fawned upon by fellow students, handed one Division II honor after another. The anonymity of his freshman year had vanished, and with his newfound celebrity, said Lorna, came a sizeable ego. “That first year I never had to worry about other girls,” said Lorna. “But sophomore year—he turned into a dog. A lot of girls were throwing themselves at Walter, wanting to get with a star, and he didn’t put up much of a fight.” On multiple occasions, Walter left Lorna waiting at her doorstep. The two would plan a study night—he never showed. They’d schedule an evening at the movies—no Walter. She heard the rumors of one girl this night, another girl that night. “We went from being exclusive and serious to having this kind of off-again, on-again thing where he would show up, not show up, be nice, be moody,” Lorna said. “I loved him, but I didn’t love how he always treated me.”

Unlike Walter’s freshman season, the Tigers entered 1972 with high expectations. When a team finishes 9-1-1, as Jackson State did, people crave more of the same. The Tigers were returning twenty-three lettermen, and in Payton and fullbacks Young and Phillips, Hill boasted three standout sophomore backs.

The Tigers opened at home against Prairie View on September 16, and the six thousand or so fans who braved a cold rain witnessed one of the uglier games in school history. Jackson State won 16–13 over a vastly inferior opponent, but there was nothing pretty in the performance. “I was trying to explain to Coach Hill during the game why we were struggling with their 4-3 defense,” said Charles Brady, a Tigers defensive tackle. “Coach punched me in the belly and told me to shut up.” With Hill rampaging up and down the sideline and Payton held to under fifty total yards, the afternoon felt like a disaster. When the game ended Hill entered the locker room, grabbed his clipboard, marched toward Payton and Young, and slammed both of them over the heads.

“Next week we have Lane!” he screamed. “You better play better! You better play fucking better!”

Odell Tate carried a gun.

If there’s one thing you need to know about Lane College’s dysfunctional football program in the fall of 1972, it’s that the man in charge packed heat. When Tate was hired by the tiny, historically black Jackson, Tennessee–based college prior to the season, it was with the idea that the longtime high school coach would instill a sense of pride and discipline.

To the members of Lane’s executive board, that meant teaching the virtues of hard work and commitment and punctuality and intensity.

To Tate, it apparently meant violent craziness.

“The gun was a .25 automatic,” recalled Cameron Franklin, a Lane offensive guard. “He would bring it to practice every day and keep it in his back pocket. One week we were practicing, and somebody had egged and toiletpapered his car. He thought the players did it, so he started waving the gun at us, screaming, ‘If I catch who did this to my car, I’ll pop ’em!’ ”

Combined with a coach’s madness, the team’s lack of overall talent (the Dragons played in the mediocre SIAC (Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference) spelled doom. Lane was playing at Jackson State for the second time in school history, a matchup that had nothing to do with gridiron glory and everything to do with finances. With an enrollment of merely thirteen hundred students and a budget that paled in comparison to other schools its size, Lane was always on the lookout for ways to score an extra buck. Hill’s Tigers, meanwhile, needed a sure-shot victory or two before facing Grambling, Alcorn, and the other heavyweights of the SWAC. As was common practice, Jackson State agreed to pay Lane a couple of thousand dollars to come to Memorial Stadium.

In anticipation of the game, Tate worked his players to death. “Coach was determined we needed to be in tip-top shape when we played them,” said Wilkins Raybon, a Lane linebacker. “So that week he ran us and ran us good. He thought he was getting us in top condition, but really he was wearing us down. By the time the game started, we were exhausted.”

Tate warned his players that the Tigers had a running back—“That number thirty-four!”—who wouldn’t succumb to mere arm tackles. What he didn’t know was Payton featured a new weapon that, through the course of his career, would serve as the ultimate equalizer. Midway through the summer, Hill had asked Walter if he was interested in accompanying him on a recruiting trip to Birmingham, Alabama (Hill enjoyed taking his players for long rides). The two settled into the coach’s Cadillac, and as he drove Hill told the story of how he broke loose in his days as a runner at Jackson State. “When I played here, we used to get rolls of athletic tape that came in these big cardboard boxes,” Hill said. “Well, one day a trainer threw out one of the boxes, so I grabbed it, cut it right down the middle, and taped it around my arm. Then I put my jersey over it so nobody would know.” As Hill remembered it, he lined up in the backfield, took a handoff, and started down the sideline. “When a defensive back came up, I just walloped him in the head with the cardboard—POP! It worked like magic, and I didn’t feel pain. From that day on, every time someone tried to tackle me I’d cock my elbow and hit him with a forearm. That became my calling card.”

Hill wasn’t endorsing the procedure, just regaling in yesteryear. The next time Walter came to practice, however, he was wearing a knee pad over his arm. Hill asked Willie Barnes, the team’s trainer, what was going on. “I don’t want my guys having nothing on their arms,” he said. “Did you give him that?” To which Barnes replied, “Yes, but Walter said you told him he could wear it.” Hill laughed, then pulled all the running backs aside. “I have a rule,” he said. “Nothing can be on your arms.” Hill paused. “But Walter is different.”

From that day forward, Payton’s forearm served as a cement block. He raised it, then slammed it down upon an opponent’s head. He used it like a club and gnashed it into an oncoming tackler’s jaw. Whereas defenders once only had to worry about Walter’s speed and toughness, they now had to concern themselves with assault and battery. Thanks to the forearm, Walter would never play victim again. “After games his elbow would be the size of a grapefruit,” said Vernon Perry, the Jackson State safety. “They’d drain the blood out of it every week.”

The Dragons had no idea what they were in for. “They walked into the cafeteria a few hours before the game talking all sorts of junk about what they were going to do to us,” said Milton Webb, Jackson State’s middle linebacker. “We just laughed and said, ‘OK, we’ll see. We’ll see.’ ”

Fearing the Jackson State running game, Tate shifted his best player, Larry “Sleepy” Harris, from cornerback to safety, hoping he could charge the line and bottle up some of the inevitable holes. For the initial few minutes it worked—the Tigers failed to score on their first possession.