Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [121]
If a couple of Bears entertained even a slight hope of pulling off the shocker, it was squashed when the organization—long known for its thriftiness under George Halas—refused to fly the team to a warmer climate for a week of practice. Instead, Pardee’s men were forced to work out in daily blizzards, with temperatures hovering in the low-teens. When the climate was absolutely unbearable (in Pardee’s world, anything below five degrees), the team retreated to the Naval Station Great Lakes, which featured a handful of shoddy indoor dirt fields. “Here’s how cheap the Bears are,” said Earl, the fullback/tight end. “It’s twenty-below zero here in Chicago and we have two feet of snow on the ground. Wouldn’t you think the organization would fly us down to Dallas and find us a place to work out and prepare? But oh, no. They bus us to a barn about forty miles away, where we work out on a dirt floor. There are chickens and hogs and goats. We went to the barn because it was only thirty-five degrees in there, as opposed to the negative twenty it was outside. Every day after practice I had to take a towel and wipe away the snot bubbles. And they were black, because of all the dust from the barn. How do you properly prepare for the biggest game of your life inside a dirty, chicken-infested facility? You don’t.”
While most of his teammates were busy grousing about the shoddy conditions, Payton focused elsewhere. A couple of weeks earlier he had been told about the plight of Adrian Lister, a defensive end on the football team at nearby Wheaton Central High School. In a game against Glenbard South, Lister broke his neck, leaving him a quadriplegic. When Payton learned he was the boy’s hero, he rushed to the intensive care unit at Central DuPage Hospital, sat by Adrian’s bed, and spoke with him throughout visiting hour. Although the eighteen-year-old couldn’t speak, he looked up as Payton repeatedly insisted that God’s eyes were upon him. “If we athletes remember how lucky we really are, then we can’t forget the thousands of Chicago people—including young ones like Adrian Lister—who are in hospitals or sick in their homes during this Christmas season,” Payton told the Tribune. “Some, like Adrian, will be in bed when Christmas is long gone. We athletes know how these people admire our talents. So we must give one hundred percent of ourselves in helping the less fortunate.”
Even with the big Cowboy clash approaching, Payton was thinking about Adrian. He visited him again in the hospital, and set up the Adrian Fund to pay for the entirety of the rehabilitation costs.
On the morning of Monday, December 26, Doug Buffone, Chicago’s veteran linebacker, addressed his teammates. “Look,” he said, “I’ve got [the Cowboys] figured out. They’re gonna have to put twelve men on the field if they hope to beat us.” That afternoon, the Bears got hammered, 37–7, with Payton rushing for a mere sixty yards on nineteen carries. “We spanked the hell out of them,” said Jay Saldi, a Dallas tight end. “All we focused on that entire week was shutting down Walter.” While he was dispirited by the loss, Payton couldn’t get Adrian out of his mind. The boy would never walk again. He was confined to a wheelchair, his life forever scarred by one unfortunate moment.
Losing to the Cowboys? Big deal.
CHAPTER 15
DARKNESS
THE DARKNESS OF THE WORST YEAR OF WALTER PAYTON’S LIFE ENDS HERE. IN the town he will never again consider home. In the coroner’s office he never thought he’d visit. On a wood table covered with plastic film.
Here.
His father is dead—fifty-four years old, seemingly healthy as a thoroughbred one minute, cold and lifeless the next. When Bud Holmes called Walter to tell him the news, he was greeted by silence. Long, painful, awkward silence.
“Walter, did you hear what I said?”
Silence.
“Walter . . .”
On the evening of Monday, December 11, 1978, Peter Payton was tending