Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [123]
Peter Payton wasn’t intoxicated, and he hadn’t suffered a heart attack. He passed from an intracranial berry aneurysm, a saclike outpouching in a cerebral blood vessel that ruptured and seeped blood into the cranium. Whereas the store clerks and police officers assumed Payton was merely under the influence, he was—in actuality—dying. According to Gonzalez’s report, “the clot had been seeping blood into the brain for seventy-two hours and his motor reflexes were impaired.” The pathologist’s report said the condition would give the appearance that Payton was drunk.
Walter returned to Columbia with his mother, and the media couldn’t resist. Paul Harvey, the nationally syndicated conservative radio commentator, told his listeners that Peter Payton had been intoxicated and unruly—and Walter became enraged. “He never forgot what Harvey said,” said Ginny Quirk, who later worked for Payton. “That infuriated him.” The story had everything to offer: death, race, intrigue. What were the odds of a Mississippi police department letting a black man die all alone by accident? There had to be wrongdoing. “I got a call for an interview from a Chicago TV station talking about a civil rights investigation,” said Holmes. “I said, ‘What civil rights investigation? If there was any wrongdoing, let’s blast them. But let’s not lose our sense over a whole lot of nothing.’ ”
Walter Payton refused to comment publicly on his father’s passing. Inside, however, he was livid. Brain aneurysm or no brain aneurysm, Peter Payton had died in jail. Though Columbia was the town where Walter was born and raised, any sentimental attachment was dead. From that point forward, he responded to inquiries about his place of origin by saying, “Jackson.” Following his breakout 1976 season, Walter had visited the Columbia Country Club to play a round of golf. This was the spot where Eddie had caddied as a boy, and where, long ago, Alyne made her famed pancakes and hamburgers for the all-white membership. Having brought Columbia substantial fame, and having represented the town with dignity, Walter never imagined he wouldn’t be allowed admittance.
He wasn’t allowed admittance.
Now, two years later, there was this. One of Walter’s close friends at the time was Ron Atlas, the owner of the Pool Hall and Cat House, a Chicago swimming pool store. Atlas was a licensed attorney, and Payton asked him to fly to Mississippi and help Holmes uncover the truth. “I couldn’t go for some reason, but I remember the rage in Walter,” Atlas said. “The first time I ever saw Walter cry was when his dad died, but then he became furious. He didn’t have a whole lot of good to say about his hometown. He believed it was a racial thing, because he knew how Mississippi worked when it came to blacks.
“I really think the death of his father changed Walter,” Atlas said. “Not racially, because he was as open-minded as they came. But he was a lot less trusting of people and their motives.
“A lot less trusting.”8
The darkness of the worst year of Walter Payton’s life begins here, eleven months before his father’s death.
In Chicago. At the Bears’ headquarters. On the afternoon of January 19, 1978.
Jack Pardee, the only professional coach Walter has ever known, and a man inclined to allow his back thirty carries per game, has resigned to take the same position with the Washington Redskins. The Bears, naturally, are taken aback. Pardee spoke of loyalty and trust