Sweetness Page 4

  In the summers, Eddie was signed by a couple of local black semipro baseball teams, the Columbia Jets and the Laurel Blue Sox, earning ten dollars a game in return for his line drives into the gaps and smooth glove at shortstop. He played varsity baseball and basketball at Jefferson, and excelled in both. “Truth is, in high school Eddie was faster than Walter and tougher than Walter,” said Charles Virgil, a classmate. “He was only about five foot six, yet he could stand flatfooted directly under the basket, jump up, and dunk the ball.” It was on the gridiron where Eddie Payton truly excelled, emerging as one of the state’s best half backs. Just how good was Eddie? Columbia High’s white players flocked to Gardner Stadium to see Payton in action. “We’d all go and sit in the northeast stands and just be blown away,” said Steve Stewart, Columbia High’s standout linebacker. “He was so much better than anything we had. Eddie Payton was the best football player I’d ever seen. He did things none of us could imagine.”

  And what of Walter? The head coach of Jefferson High School, Charles Boston, had been aware that somewhere within the building’s confines his all-everything halfback had a younger brother. But it wasn’t until an otherwise nondescript weekday afternoon that knowledge and reality collided. Boston, who also served as Jefferson’s assistant principal, was sitting in his office, looking over some papers, when he was told that a junior high student was crying in the courtyard.

  “Who is it?” he asked.

  “Oh, just Eddie Payton’s little brother.”

  Boston ran out to find Walter, all of five foot five, withering in pain on the ground. He had snapped his collarbone in a game of sandlot football, and his left arm now dangled like a fork on a string. “He’s crying and crying and crying,” said Boston. “So I picked him up, called his mother, and took him to Marion County General Hospital.”

  Throughout the long, gray hallways of Jefferson High School, everyone knew Charles Boston, and Charles Boston knew most everyone. Granted, he was the assistant principal, as well as the football coach. But it was more than that. In Boston, Jefferson’s students found an advocate; a man who genuinely believed that, despite reason to think otherwise, young black boys and young black girls could emerge from a bitterly racist society to accomplish their goals. “Mr. Boston was the perfect example of the strong black male who was comfortable with himself because he never needed a white person to lean on,” said Edward Moses, Walter’s classmate and friend. “He didn’t need a title, and he didn’t need anyone to anoint him a leader. He led by nature. It was his gift.” Born in the impoverished town of Laurel, Mississippi, in 1933, Boston was one of ten siblings in a family renowned for athletic excellence. An older brother, Peter, was perhaps the best wide receiver Laurel had ever produced. His little brother, Ralph, would go on to win a gold medal in the long jump at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome. For one remarkable twelve-year stretch, there was always a Boston brother playing on the Oak Park High School varsity football team. “People accused the school of using the same guy for all those years,” said Charles, who excelled in football and basketball. “We all punted, so that raised suspicions. But when Peter was in high school, he weighed a hundred eighty pounds. I was one-forty.”

  If Boston took one thing from his prep football experience, it was that brutal coaching methods—at the time a staple of black Southern football—were unnecessary. From the sidelines, Boston watched opposing coaches smack their players, punch their players, kick their players. Although Russell Frye, Oak Park’s coach, occasionally laid his hands on others, he never touched Boston. “I told him I’d do the absolute best I could,” he said, “but that I wasn’t going to be abused.” Boston was a good enough player for Frye to comply.

  In 1959, following four years of football at Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College (later known as Alcorn State University), Boston was hired as a gym teacher/football coach by (tiny) Carver High School in (tiny) Bassfield, Mississippi. He was twenty-two years old, and he was greeted on his first day by a team with twenty-two players and seventeen ragtag uniforms. “We won three games that first year, and I was sure I’d be fired,” Boston said. “I’d played on two championship teams in Laurel, and I was used to winning. But the people in Bassfield were so happy with me winning three games that they wanted to name me mayor.” The following year, mighty John J. Jefferson High traveled eighteen miles to Bassfield to face Boston’s team, which now only had seventeen active players. “Somehow we whipped them, nine to six,” said Boston. “And everything changed.”

  In 1963, Jefferson High was led by a sports-crazed principal named W. S. MacLauren. Though the black schools could never match their white counterparts in scholarship winners or academic achievement or future college graduates, there was an unspoken goal of stepping ahead in athletics. Columbia High would, of course, never acknowledge Jefferson’s on-field achievements. But Jefferson’s staff and players knew they could be the better program. Hence, in the aftermath of the young coach from Bassfield showing up his team, MacLauren presented Boston, a married father of two, an offer he could not refuse: a four-hundred-dollar raise and the chance to continue teaching P.E.

  Boston accepted—and the blacks of Columbia quickly turned against their new leader. The previous coach at Jefferson was Scott Jones, an ornery, unpleasant little man who wore a pair of spiked-toed shoes to practice in order to kick players who made boneheaded mistakes. Jones also kept a two-by-four piece of wood in hand, and never thought twice about slamming it into backsides. Such was what parents in the black communities expected of their leaders; a tougher-than-dirt approach to discipline. If your son came home from practice with black-and-blue welts across his arms and legs, well, he surely deserved it.

  Boston never physically abused a player at Bassfield, and he would not do so at Jefferson. “I thought I was doing right,” he said. “To get a guy in front of eight hundred people at a game and kick him . . . that has to be degrading.” Boston won four games in his first season at Jefferson, and fared little better the next two. In the community, he was increasingly dismissed as a softie. But the players loved and respected him. Boston was the rare male authority figure who didn’t do his talking with the backside of a hand. He drove his players home after practices and games, found them jobs in the community, and checked on their schoolwork. “When I played for Coach Boston I lived way north of Columbia, so on some days I wouldn’t get home from school until ten or eleven at night,” said Joe Owens, a former Jefferson lineman who went on to spend seven years in the NFL. “One day he showed up with a car—a 1954 Chevrolet Bel Air—and he let me keep it. I dropped off all the guys who lived in the rural areas, and we were all home by eight. He changed the whole way people thought about sports and attitudes toward players.”

  The following season, Jefferson’s football team was graced by the arrival of the transcendent Eddie Payton, who teamed with a fullback named Ray Holmes to give the Green Wave one of the state’s best backfields. With Eddie as the star, Jefferson won thirty-four games over four years. “Eddie changed a lot for us,” said Boston. “He was the type of kid you hope for. Simply put, he was a ballplayer. He was short, but I used him at middle linebacker. I’d walk him up on that center’s ear, and if you weren’t ready Eddie would be all over you. And on offense, he was just unstoppable running the ball. I went from a dumb coach to a smart one overnight.” Over time Boston developed an intimate relationship with the Payton family—he lived a few houses down on Hendricks Street, and gave Eddie a job playing alongside him on the Laurel Blue Sox (Boston was an accomplished semipro baseball player). On his daily walk to school, Boston would chat with Alyne and Peter. They embraced him as someone who had their sons’ best interests at heart. “He was a good man,” said Eddie. “He was very, very decent.”

  Walter, however, remained an enigma. He was attached to his mother—Boston could see that. And unlike Eddie, he didn’t share absolutely every thought that floated through his cranium. “They were apples and oranges all the way down the line,” said Mose
s, Walter’s friend and classmate. “Eddie would find himself as the leader of any group he was a part of. Walter was much more laid-back—his leadership came from his gifts.” Classmates told Boston that the boy was a secret prankster, but it was hard to see. The kid was so . . . quiet. On Jefferson’s fields, he would run circles around the other boys, ducking, weaving, bobbing, slicing, juking, escaping. His moves were distinctly artistic and ethereal, so much so that a ridiculous rumor started about Walter Payton taking ballet classes after school.

  And yet, as Walter Payton began his freshman year of high school in the fall of 1967, he showed little interest in organized football. He was a music guy; firmly entrenched as a drummer in both Jefferson’s concert and marching bands. When asked about the gridiron, he mostly shrugged dismissively and noted, “That’s Eddie’s world. Not mine.”

  So what changed between his freshman and sophomore years? What pushed him toward organized football? In a word: Eddie. Or, to be more precise, Eddie’s departure. Walter’s older brother graduated from John J. Jefferson High in the spring of 1968, earning a prized football scholarship to Jackson State College, one of the best black schools in the nation. No longer, Walter believed, would he be measured against the Big Man on Campus. No longer would he have to meet the standards set by his sibling. “I followed an older brother who starred in my sport,” said Boston. “And I can tell you one thing—it’s thankless.”

  In the waning days of summer, 1968, Walter took part in organized football workouts for the first time. With the stifling Mississippi sun beating down on his shoulders, he trudged out to Jefferson High’s practice field for the daily eleven A.M. gatherings. His shoulder pads were grayish and scuffed, likely hand-me-downs from Columbia High. There was a box of white jerseys in a large cardboard box, and each day the players would pick one randomly. Walter could be No. 2 one day, No. 23 the next. (Once the season started, he was assigned No. 22, which had belonged to Eddie. Whether he was happy about this or not, we’ll never know. But he didn’t complain.)

  Out on the sandlots, the game had come easily to Walter—run fast, run hard, score. But now there were whistles blowing, coaches yelling, designated plays to follow. “The first time I got the ball in practice and heard all those footsteps coming, I panicked,” he wrote in his 1978 autobiography. “I had visions of getting ground into the turf under the weight of a half-dozen huge upperclassmen towering over me, so I scooted to daylight and ran for my life.” Walter, however, was running the wrong way. He scored for the opposing unit.

  Boston stormed onto the field and lectured his new back. He demanded the play be run again. This time, Payton scooted through the wrong hole, where he was met by an oncoming linebacker. “I just stopped,” he wrote, “in embarrassment.” Despite the miscues, Boston had a soft spot for the green running back. Payton was physically gifted and eager to learn. He didn’t talk trash, wasn’t lazy, and never took a play off. “He was fun to have there,” Boston said. “You liked being around him.”

  Even with a regal last name and an increasingly statuesque body, Walter was handed nothing. With Eddie’s departure, Boston made it clear that the number-one halfback would be Everett Farr, a modestly talented senior with limited moves but an energetic approach. None of Walter’s friends remember him complaining or being especially upset. Boston pulled him aside and assured him his day would come. In the meantime, he bided his time by starting at strong safety and checking in for Farr when the senior needed a breather.

  In 1968 the Green Wave finished 7-3. Late in the season, in a game against Marion Central, Farr broke his foot, and Payton stepped into the starting lineup. His impact was minimal. According to memories, he scored four or five touchdowns and ran for anywhere between two hundred and four hundred yards. In his autobiography, Payton wrote of starting the first game of the season and being named to the league All-Star team. Neither recollection was real. “He was good,” said Moses, who also played running back. “But we all had to learn the game.”

  Those in the know, however, couldn’t contain their excitement. In Walter, Boston saw a bigger (Walter was five foot six as a junior, Eddie had been five foot four), stronger version of his brother. He was also significantly more versatile. Walter punted the ball beyond forty yards. He could kick twenty-five- to thirty-yard field goals. He tackled well, and was a knockdown defensive back. In his coach’s mind, Payton had It—that certain undefined something that separates great from very good. “He was bursting with ability,” Boston said. “If you knew football, you knew that much.”

  When Walter returned for his junior year at Jefferson, there was little ambiguity about the identification of the school’s star athlete. Along with continuing his drumming in the concert band (he had given up marching band for football), Walter ran the hundred-yard dash for the track team, and played forward in basketball and shortstop in baseball.

  Carrying the football, however, was Payton’s gift. Boston favored the T-formation offense, and his junior class of players presented some titillating possibilities. The new quarterback was Archie Johnson, an honors student and future valedictorian who possessed a strong arm and quick feet. The left back was Moses, a small, spindly boy who happened to run like lightning. The right back was Michael Woodson, as quick as they came. And lining up directly behind Johnson, technically as the fullback, was Walter Payton.

  “We were really frightening,” said Johnson.

  Just how good was Payton as a high school junior? On October 30, 1969, the Columbian-Progress actually ran his portrait above the following paragraph:

  Walter Payton, a Junior [sic] at John Jefferson High School was chosen Player of the Week for his performance in the Travillion game. Payton . . . scored three touchdowns in the Greenwaves [sic] 46 to 0 victory over Travillion. He is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Payton of 14010 [sic] Hendricks Street, Columbia.

  The photograph, apparently taken in front of Jefferson High, shows a serious Payton. He is neither frowning nor smiling, but staring blankly into space, perhaps wondering whether this Columbian-Progress photo shoot is some sort of joke. In all his years at Jefferson, Eddie’s picture had never appeared in the Progress.

  For the first time ever, the whites in Columbia were talking about Jefferson High’s football team. The innovative Jefferson offense combined blinding speed with sharp cuts, funky patterns, and innovative play calling. Payton and Moses even gave themselves their own nicknames—Payton was “Spider-Man,” Moses “Sugar Man.” The sobriquets stuck.

  The two schools in town, the white and the black, usually played on back-to-back days at Gardner Stadium—Columbia High always first, Jefferson second, when the field was a mangled salad of dirt and grass chunks. As the season progressed, and talk of the Payton-Moses running tandem grew, an increasing number of fans either attended both games, or skipped out on Columbia High altogether.

  Playing in something called the Tideland Conference, Jefferson’s team traveled across Mississippi aboard a pair of beat-up old yellow school buses, complete with torn green seats and the inexplicable scent of dead elk. Boston always strove to schedule the hardest possible competition, which meant the Green Wave trekked an hour and a half to Laurel to face Oak Park High, and nearly two hours to Picayune for a date with George Washington Carver High. The travels were joyless, back-road jaunts to nowhere, with bus drivers always keeping an eye out for redneck cops looking to make an easy collar.

  Jefferson went 8-2 Payton’s junior year, routinely dismantling opponents. With a six-foot-six, 260-pound tackle named Bobby Price leading the way, Walter carried the football anywhere from eighteen to twenty-five times per game, emerging as Mississippi’s best black halfback. Boston had been around long enough to know Payton was destined to be different. So he worked tirelessly with him. Payton was stronger than most linemen and faster than most defensive backs, but he initially lacked the ruggedness his coach had insisted upon. Boston drilled into his head the idea of attacking defensive players; of slamming into the tacklers before the t
acklers slammed into him. He instructed Payton to use body parts as weapons—a sharp elbow to the chest, a pulverizing forearm to the chin.

  Wrote Payton in his autobiography:

  He taught me that when I could no longer successfully elude a tackler, I should let the man have a memory of the tackle as vivid as my own. In other words, why should I be the one who gets clobbered? As long as there are two of us in on the play, and I have been slowed by others to the point of where I can’t break away from him, he ought to take half the blow. Then it won’t hurt me so much. I enjoyed that. It made sense.... More and more often, the second time a guy came at me, he remembered that first shot he’d taken from me. If he hesitated or rolled into his tackle instead of driving into it, I had the upper hand. I’d ram right through him or over him, and suddenly it was the scared little running back scoring rather than the big brute executing a crushing tackle.

  Because Columbia and Jefferson never played each other, the school’s biggest rival was all-black Marion Central High, located three miles across town. Leading up to the meeting, Boston was more animated than usual. The Tigers were coached by Leslie Peters, a former Jefferson High star who was building an impressive program. “Here’s the deal,” Boston told his players the morning of the game. “If you score seventy points, I’ll throw a barbecue for the entire team.”

  A barbecue? For everyone? Behind multiple Payton touchdowns and a big passing day from Johnson, the Green Wave jumped out to a 64–0 lead, but with less than two minutes remaining found themselves one score away from chicken-and-pork pay dirt. When a Jefferson defensive back named Herman Lee intercepted a Marion Central pass, the offense stormed back onto the field and took over ten yards away from the end zone. Michael “Dobie” Woodson, the fleet halfback/defensive back, was corralled from behind by Boston. “Dobie, you haven’t scored yet, right?” he asked.