Walter & Me (17 page)

“Oh Lord,” Coach said, seriously calling out to God for help. “Let me get up and go down there.”

“Nah, nah, it’s all right coach,” Walter said, not pushing the prank too far. “We had a little money with us, so it’s cool. We got our money together and put up bond, so we got him out.”

“Oh man, I appreciate that,” Coach said, ready to go back to sleep and to deal with the situation in the morning. “I appreciate y’all doing that for him.” Then they hung up the phone and Walter and Brazile laughed and laughed about what was going to happen.

Well, Coach didn’t sleep very well after that call and decided to deal with the situation at about 6:00
am
. Coach had this little guy appropriately named Shortman who worked for him, so Coach sent Shortman over to go get this player to come meet him at his house so they could talk about what happened. Well, the kid didn’t know anything about anything, of course, because nothing had happened. He was just laid up there in the bed, sound asleep. Shortman knocked on the door until the kid got up and opened it. Shortman went in the room and said, “Look, Coach wants to see you.”

“For what?” the kid said, his eyes still squinting out the sleep.

“I don’t know. Coach just told me to come get you, so you better get up and go.” The kid was still under Coach’s control, unlike Walter, and he must have already learned that you don’t mess with Coach Hill, because he got right up and went with Shortman.

When they got to Coach Hill’s house, Coach started right in on him. Coach asked him to explain what happened, and the kid had no clue what to say. “Now, don’t you lie to me,” Coach said like a daddy about to give a whoopin’. “I already know what happened last night. Just tell me what’s going on.” This went on for a while, with Coach asking the kid to explain and the kid saying the whole time he had no idea what Coach was talking about. Finally, Coach believed him and realized that Walter had set the whole thing up. He thought about how he should’ve seen it coming given Walter’s history, and he dreamed about seeing him running laps as punishment. But he knew he couldn’t do anything about it. Coach just had to deal with it. Walter got ’em both—killed two birds with one prank. He tricked Coach the worst, but he also got the kid. Coach still won’t admit it to this day, but he was punked. And if Walter would punk Coach Hill, well, then no one was immune. Not even his agent.

Bud was out on a pheasant hunting trip one day in North Dakota during Walter’s rookie year, right after Bud had gotten him the highest signing bonus for any player ever from Mississippi. Someone from Bud’s office drove out to find him in what was basically the middle of nowhere. When they finally got out to where he was and tracked him down, they said to Bud, “We have an emergency—Walter Payton’s got to talk to you.”

Bud was enjoying his trip and didn’t want to deal with anything, but he knew he had to. With a hint of annoyance, he said, “Oh, what is it?”

They said, “Don’t know, he wouldn’t say. He just said he’s got to talk to you and that it’s an emergency.” Well, there were no cell phones back then, so Bud had to leave what he was doing and drive all the way back to where he could find a phone. When he finally did, he called Walter, thinking,
Yeah, this better be an emergency
. Bud said, “Walter, what’s up?”

“Well, I quit,” Walter stated, almost in a pouty sort of way.

“What?” Bud couldn’t believe what he was hearing and had no idea how to respond.

“Yeah, that’s right. I quit. They got me out there at that practice, and they’re trying to tell me to do things and stuff. They want me to do this and that and whatever. I just can’t put up with it. I don’t need this shit. So…I quit. I’m done with it. I’ve already gone home.”

“Walter, come on, man,” Bud said, trying to reason with him.

“Nah, I quit.”

“I tell you what, Walter…” Bud said, not sure what he’d say next. It didn’t matter anyway because Walter cut him off.

“Nah, I quit. That’s it. I’ll just do something else. I’m just not going to put up with it.”

“Come on, Walter. Look, here’s what I’ll do. I’ll change clothes, and I’ll catch a flight out of here.” Bud was up around Bismarck, pretty far away from the problem at hand. “So, I’ll get a flight, and I can meet you over there. Just meet me in Chicago, okay? I’ll just meet you over there.”

“No, I ain’t going to do it,” Walter said emphatically.

Bud was shocked and confused. “Why not?”

“Because, I just ain’t going to do it.”

“You’re telling me you’re not going to do what I tell you?”

“Uh-huh.”

Bud was getting frustrated. “You ain’t going to mind me? Your agent? Haven’t you learned your lesson on that? When the hell did you get so damn big that now you don’t do what I say?”

Walter continued on, “Nah, I ain’t going to go to Chicago.”

Bud begged and pleaded, trying everything to get Walter to meet him in Chicago. “Come on, Walter,” he tried one last time. “What the hell is wrong? How come you won’t just meet me in Chicago so we can handle this?”

Walter then decided to let Bud off the hook. “Because I’m already here. I ain’t going to meet you here ’cause I’m already here.”

Bud was confused. “Huh?”

Walter laughed as he followed it up and said, in his signature playful way, “Yeah, I knew I could get you. I knew I’d get you out of the woods. They told me I couldn’t get you out of the woods, but I told ’em I bet I could. Well, I won my bet.” It didn’t even matter who “they” were; Bud had been had. And Walter just laughed his pants off about it.

Bud was a good sport about it, and that wasn’t the only time Walter pranked Bud. I wouldn’t say Walter was a drinking man, but he sure did love him some Bud. When he wasn’t pulling tricks on him, Walter would even go down to Bud’s farm to train for training camp. Bud’s farm really became Walter’s home away from home, and Bud became his second father. Of course, Bud knew that if they ever got into it as “father” and “son,” Walter would be the one whoopin’ ass. He was as strong as an ox and a workout fiend in those days. His body was just unbelievable, like a sculpted piece of art—chiseled muscles everywhere. I’d go with Walter to Bud’s farm sometimes to work out, too, but Walter would stay longer and train harder than I did. The man was more obsessed with hard work and being in better shape than anyone in the league; I couldn’t keep up with that. I was just Sweet P, so how could I? Walter always said to me, “I want to be in the best shape of anybody on the team. If I’m the key person, then I got to set the pace and be the example.” He was the key person for the Bears, that’s for sure, and he definitely set the pace in terms of physical conditioning. No doubt about that, even if there was some doubt as to his sanity. I mean, his workouts were just plain insane.

He’d sometimes wait until the hottest part of the day, probably about 11:30
am
or so, and he’d go over to Southern Mississippi’s stadium in Hattiesburg—about 20 minutes from Bud’s farm. There was never any media out watching him, and very few people knew he was there. If they did, they probably would’ve all come out and seen the craziest workout of their lives. For three hours, from about 11:30 until about 2:30, he’d just run that stadium like it really meant something. He’d never slow down. Not a bit for the whole three hours. He’d just run, run, run…and run some more. When he finished, he’d go take a shower and get in the whirlpool and go back to Bud’s farm to take a nap. Then after just a bit of shut-eye, another crazy (he’d call it “fun”) workout would begin. Walter would dress up in camo pants and army boots and he’d take Bud’s gun from Vietnam out into the woods with him. For the rest of the day, Sweetness would play Rambo. That crazy brother of mine would go all over the farm by himself, running up and down old ditches, and jump across the creek with that gun. He’d get down and hide for a few seconds, then belly crawl out like he was trying to elude the enemy. I was happy to know that some of what I taught my kid brother back in our plum-poaching days stuck with him all that time. Anyway, if you saw him out there, you’d think he was trying to take Hamburger Hill. To Walter, it was great fun. To me, it was a crazy-ass workout. To you, it might sound just plain crazy. But in all seriousness, there wasn’t a six-year-old boy who enjoyed that shit more than he did. It was a dream come true for Walter to be in the NFL, but I think his favorite moments during his football career were those Rambo workouts on Bud’s farm.

My brother worked so hard for his dream that a lot of people would say it was a nightmare. Those people just don’t understand the level of dedication and commitment it takes to make it in pro football. The thing I try to tell young people now (well, the ones who will listen, anyway) is that if you have a dream and believe in yourself, just don’t ever give up on your dream and don’t ever stop believing. Most importantly, don’t ever stop working crazy hard. Do whatever it takes. Because what you may view as a mountain to climb or an impossible fence to get over is just preparing you for what you’re going to have to do when your dream presents itself as reality. Believe the impossible and work impossibly hard. That’s what it takes.

I know most people probably think I couldn’t hold a candle to my brother, and that’s okay. As for me, I never once doubted that I was as good a running back as No. 34. You have to think about yourself like that or you won’t make it. I just had to wait for somebody to give me a chance, and when that chance came, I proved that my running can give cavities, too. Sweetness wasn’t the only Payton sending people to the dentist. Sweet P was also out there bringing the sugary funk. It’s just that I was too small to be remembered.

Walter was listed as 5'11", and the 5'10"/5'11" players got a lot more attention than us little guys. Shoot, there weren’t even a lot of 5'7" guys like me in the league at all at that time. We were few and far between. And those of us who were in the league didn’t get a fair shot at running back because of our size. We were all fully capable runners—people like Noland Smith, “White Shoes” Johnson, Mike Garrett, guys like that—but we were labeled as specialists. Howard Stevens played for the Saints at the time, and he was like 5'5", so there was no chance he was going to carry the ball. All of us little guys returned kicks. I guess 5'8" and under kind of became the ideal size for kick returners, at least in the minds of the coaches. That’s what they asked us to do, and that’s what we did. They were the ones signing our paychecks, and we were determined to get paid. Even today, though, I think most kick returners are either frustrated running backs or frustrated receivers. They’re not getting their shot at their natural or desired positions for whatever reason (maybe even reasons they have no control over, like size), but they are good enough athletes to help a team.

I helped the Detroit Lions for two great seasons. I was so good returning kicks that they didn’t just pay me…they paid me more. Things were looking good for Sweet P. Then they went and changed coaches. They brought in Monte Clark as the head coach, and the next thing I knew, I was on a plane for Kansas City. The new guy up and traded me to the Chiefs for the 1978 season. It was good for the Chiefs and for all those women waiting for me in Kansas City, but I wasn’t sure about the place at first. Still, I gave it my all, both in the bed and on the field. I finished fourth in the AFC in punt returns and fourth in the AFC in kickoff returns. I was on my third team, yes, but I couldn’t complain. I was still in the NFL, playing with my brother. Things were going well for us Payton boys. Then, the week before our last game of the season, I got a phone call that turned our family’s world upside down.

10. Thinkin’ What-Ifs

On Monday, December 11, 1978, I was just sitting in my place in Kansas City, trying to relax after a hard practice with the Chiefs. We had just gotten our butts kicked by the Denver Broncos the day before, and the coaches made us pay for it on Monday. Though the Chiefs and the Bears found themselves in the same position (with one game left in the season, neither team would be going to postseason play), Walter probably had an easier Monday than I did because the Bears had played at home against Green Bay and won that game 14–0. They had no trouble running all over the Packers. Walter had 97 yards on the ground, another 13 through
the air, and he scored one rushing touchdown. Just another day at the office for Sweetness. But that Monday wouldn’t be just another day of any sort for Walter and me. While I was recovering from practice, the phone rang. I ignored my tired legs and got up to answer it. My brother-in-law was on the other end and he wasn’t calling to see if I was doing all right after the Broncos beatdown. “Hey, Eddie,” he said, “I have some bad news for you.”

That’s not something you ever want to hear when you pick up the phone, but I was curious. “Oh yeah?” I asked. “What’s up?”

“It’s your father. He…uh…he died.”

I don’t think I even believed it at first, but I knew my brother-in-law wouldn’t be telling me this if it wasn’t true. Shoot, even Walter—prankster extraordinaire himself—wouldn’t joke about something as serious as this. “Whoa, whoa,” I responded before steadying myself. “What!?!” Then I was silent. I didn’t know what to say after that. I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. I was devastated. It felt as though
I
had died. After all, I was Daddy’s look-alike. Bud even said recently that Daddy looked a lot like I do today. “[You] were even the same size,” Bud added, “and really mirrored each other.” I found myself just holding the phone, wondering what had happened and how I was going to deal with losing Daddy. Then I stopped thinking about myself and started talking again. “How’s Momma?” I asked my brother-in-law.

“She’s all right, man,” he said, not telling me the truth. Momma was right there with him and snatched the phone. Of course, I expected her to be upset since it had just happened and all, but she was more than upset. Momma was nothing short of hysterical. Even angry. “Eddie,” she yelled into the phone, “they killed your daddy!”

I didn’t know what to do with what I was hearing. I had no idea how to respond to Momma’s words.
What did she mean by that? They killed him? Who killed him?
The room was spinning, and then my brother-in-law got the phone back.

“Hey, man,” he said.

I pulled myself together and got the room standing still again. “Look, I’ll be there tomorrow,” I said. “Just take care of Momma.”

I hung up the phone and immediately called my brother. Walter had already gotten the same call from my brother-in-law, so he’d heard the bad news. He was as shocked and unprepared for it as I was. We spent a few moments in stunned silence together on the phone, both standing in the shadow of our fallen father. Walter broke the silence by saying Bud was already making plans to pick us both up. You could always count on Bud, especially in times like that.

The next 24 hours were sort of crazy for me. They all ran together in a big blur. I got up in the morning and went to the Chiefs’ headquarters to tell coach Marv Levy that my father had died and that I needed to go take care of family business. He said that was fine, of course, and that if I got back before our last game of the season to just let him know, or I could just join the team in Seattle for that final game. He also said if I needed to miss the game altogether, he would understand. It was great to have a coach who understood what was most important in this life. Football is football, and family is family. The two don’t even compare. And we weren’t just talking about family here. We were talking about Daddy.

I’d had uncles and aunts who’d died before, but Daddy was the first immediate family member I ever lost. My daddy, Peter Payton, was gone.
How could it be? He wasn’t more than 52 or 53. That’s just way too young!

Now, I’m not a drinker and wasn’t back then, either, but I needed a drink to cope with all that was happening. I called a friend of mine because I just needed to be around another human being while I waited for Walter and Bud to pick me up the next day. My friend came right over, and I broke down. She fixed me a drink, and it definitely helped ease the pain a little. I got woozy and fell asleep (that drink was probably the only way I would’ve been able to sleep at all that night), and got up the next morning haunted by Momma’s words once again. I kept hearing her voice over and over in my head. “They killed your daddy.” I was desperate for answers, and soon Bud would give them to me.

I really can’t say enough nice things about Bud Holmes and how much he cared for all of us Paytons like we were his family. As soon as he found out Daddy had died, he dropped what he was doing and flew his personal plane, at his expense, out on that Tuesday to pick up Walter in Chicago. Then they came to Kansas City to pick me up. During the flight, Walter and I didn’t say much. We just let Bud explain as much as he could about what happened. Bud had already started his investigation and talked to a number of people the night before, finding out as much as he could about what went down. Though he didn’t yet know how Daddy died, he told us what he did know.

Daddy and Momma had a beautiful little garden about three miles up the street from their house on a small piece of property they’d bought. They called it their “plantation” and simply adored the place. Daddy worked at it real hard and spent as much time as he could tending to that garden. Bud explained to us that on his way to check on the garden on Monday, Daddy stopped by a small service station and got himself some beer. He was planning on going to the garden and drinking a beer or two while he worked. Just like a lot of other normal guys, Daddy’s four favorite things (outside of Momma and us kids) were hunting, gardening, fishing, and, yes, drinking a few beers every now and again. He mainly liked to drink on the weekends with his friends, just sitting in a rocking chair and shootin’ the breeze. But he wasn’t a drunk by any stretch of the imagination. He just had a beer or two every now and then, and that’s what he had that day while he worked that beloved garden of his. Just a beer or two.

On his way back home from the garden, Daddy must’ve noticed he was low on gas, because he pulled up to that same station to fill up. He’d gone inside to pay and talked to the girl at the counter, who later said he was slurring his words. Everybody knew my daddy, and this girl could tell something was off about him that day. She figured he’d been drinking too much and later said she told him, “Now, Pete, you need to go on home.” From what Bud was telling us, Daddy staggered around a little bit after that, got in his truck, and promptly backed into another vehicle. The people hanging around the station were obviously surprised by that and started asking Daddy things like, “Pete, what’s the matter with you?” Then someone called the police.

Daddy didn’t know what was going on, and when the police arrived, they immediately thought he was drunk. Some of the folks there that day told Bud that the police said to Daddy, “Pete, you better let us take you down to the station. You don’t need to be hurting anybody or hurting yourself, and you know you’re not capable of driving.” Daddy stumbled around some more before collapsing to the pavement. The cops were convinced at that point that Daddy was stone-cold drunk, so they picked him up, put him in the police car, and took him down to jail. They didn’t give him a sobriety or breathalyzer test or anything like that. They thought they’d seen enough and didn’t think they needed to mess with all that, so they just took Daddy to jail. Well, Bud said once they got him to jail, Daddy had a seizure. Eventually, the police took him to the hospital, and then he died. That was all he knew at that point.

What he didn’t know was that earlier in the day, Momma was driving home from Chicago where she’d been to watch the Bears play against Green Bay. Daddy had yet to stop by the service station where he’d begin his fatal downward spiral. Pam had previously begged Daddy to go to the game with Momma, because we didn’t like Momma traveling on her own, but he didn’t want to go. Like I said, he simply loved his garden and really just wanted to spend his Sunday out there working it. So, Pam made sure that our close family friends, Bertha Brewer and Johnny Hale, went with Momma to the game.

On their way home from Chicago, Momma’s main concern was making it back to Jackson by 9:00
pm
Monday night. As you know, Walter had a good game, and Momma was hoping to catch the news on WGN (a nationally broadcast Chicago station) so she could watch the highlights from the Bears game. She was getting frustrated because, according to her, Johnny was driving too slowly. He was just kind of taking it easy, not fast enough for Momma’s liking, so she made him pull over so she could take the wheel and get a move on it. Hey, what can I say? That’s our momma! Where do you think Walter and I got all that get-up-and-go? Anyway, thanks to Momma’s NASCAR-worthy driving, they made it to a friend’s house in Jackson in time to watch the news. After she saw her baby boy on TV running all over the Packers again, Momma, Bertha, and Johnny got back in the car and went on to Columbia. As soon as they got home, Daddy’s sister came running out of the house to meet them. It was late, so they knew something was wrong. Daddy’s sister was frantically repeating, “They put Peter in jail!”

Momma was quite surprised to hear that, to say the least. “Put him in jail?” Momma asked.

“Yes, Ma’am,” my daddy’s sister said.

“For what?”

“They say he was drunk.”

Momma immediately knew there had to have been a mistake. “Oh no, he couldn’t have been drunk. I know him better than that,” Momma said. “I’ve never seen him drunk. No, no, he wasn’t drunk.”

Daddy’s sister already knew that about Daddy, but she wasn’t sure what to think about what the police had told her. “Well, they say that he was staggering and couldn’t talk,” she continued. “When they were taking him to the police station…when he went to get out of his truck, they say he fell out onto the ground, and they think he was drunk, so they carried him out and put him in jail. They put him in jail, Alyne!”

Well, Momma wasn’t convinced. She knew her husband better than anyone, and he wasn’t a drunk. Johnny got out of the car and stayed with Daddy’s sister while Momma and Bertha jumped back in to go downtown to the police station to sort it all out. When Momma Payton showed up, she wanted some answers…and right quick. The police told Momma that Daddy had indeed been staggering and that they just locked him up for his own protection. Momma started right in with them and said, “No, no, no, he wasn’t drunk, he couldn’t have been drunk. He doesn’t drink that much. He might’ve had a beer or two maybe, but that’s all!”

Just like everyone else in the area, the police all knew and respected Momma and Daddy, so they listened to Momma and went to the cell where Daddy was lying on the bed to see if maybe he was coherent enough at that point to talk. Well, he wasn’t. The police arrived at his cell to discover he’d had a seizure. They came scrambling back out to get a patrol car and see Momma and said they were taking Daddy to the hospital. Momma was floored.
The hospital? What was going on?
Momma knew at that point that something very wrong was afoot. She said they then loaded Daddy into a patrol car and took him to the hospital. Momma and Bertha got back into their car and actually beat the police to the hospital. I guess Momma was driving. Well, that trip to the hospital would be the last trip Daddy would take alive, and Momma didn’t even get to see him.

“We got out there,” Momma remembered, “and they wouldn’t even let us sit in the waiting room. They said, ‘He ain’t made it here yet. We’re looking for a sick patient and y’all can’t stay in here.’ So, they moved us to another room. I think it’s because they knew he was already going to be dead when they brought him through there, and didn’t want me seeing him. They never did let me see him.”

So, after a little while of waiting in the other room, one of the black policemen came in and told Momma that Daddy had passed on. I think that officer knew even back at the station that Daddy was already well on his way to being dead. Momma stayed at the hospital until 2:00
am
, waiting and hoping and praying that somehow they’d be able to revive him. The doctor working on Daddy later said he did everything he could but that, in the end, there really was nothing he could do. He told Momma that night that Daddy probably had a heart attack. He was gone.

The next day, Bud took Walter and me to the hospital, along with a board-certified pathologist he knew. Bud went in to observe the autopsy on Daddy while Walter and I waited outside. Everybody was assuming he’d had a heart attack, because of what that doctor told Momma. There was no indication of any outside trauma or anything, so that’s what they thought it was. Turned out to be a guess, though, and not a very good one. Bud said they opened Daddy’s chest, pulled out all the vital organs, and got into the heart. They started dissecting it and looked closely at all the tissue. “They couldn’t believe how clean his arteries were, like an 18-year-old or something,” Bud said of the doctors’ response to seeing Daddy’s heart. They were just amazed by it. There was no problem with the aorta or the pulmonary arteries going out to the lungs or anything at all. Everything was perfectly clear. Once they realized it couldn’t have been a heart attack, Bud said they were going back and forth with each other, finally agreeing the only things they thought it could be was some kind of a stroke or some issue in his brain. What Bud said happened next is a little on the gross side, so you might want to skip ahead a little if you don’t have a strong stomach for this sort of thing.

“So, [the coroner] cut the top of the skull,” Bud described, “and lifted off the skull plate and looked at the brain. He started slicing, and sure enough there was a big ol’ thing in there about fist-sized, bigger than a goose egg. It was an aneurysm, which I was told is a weakening of the walls of the artery that enlarge until they basically explode or start leaking. When they got into the aneurysm, there were a bunch of white, wormlike things. They said it was protein. It takes so many hours or days for it to build up like that, and then it just bursts or leaks.”