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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 Moses, 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