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Dickerson. In the film Everybody’s All-American, Gavin Grey, the faded football star played brilliantly by Dennis Quaid, bemoans life as an ex-athlete by wailing, “This shit is killing me. I feel like I’m just some old bullshitter. The more I tell these damn stories, the more I feel like I’m making it up. Like it never even happened to me.” Payton was engulfed within a similarly hellish vortex, the numbing ritualistic mindlessness of former athletic greatness overwhelming any present and future potential. He was a fly stuck in amber—eternally No. 34 for the Chicago Bears, even when he wasn’t No. 34 for the Chicago Bears. “I always wondered whether I did Walter a favor by helping him get so big,” said Bud Holmes. “It’s a fine line whether he would have been happier as a larger-than-life celebrity, or as a man back in Columbia, Mississippi, fathering ten or twelve illegitimate children, getting thrown in jail once a month, working some blue-collar job. If Elvis had it to do all over again, would he rather just drive a truck in Tupelo?”

Payton was the clichéd celebrity—surrounded by admirers, yet alone. “He called me many times at two, three in the morning, just wanting to talk,” said Holmes. “There’s a Norman Rockwell quote—‘Pity the poor genius.’ I pitied Walter.” In his post-football years, many people insisted they were particularly close to Payton—Holmes, the agent; Mike Lanigan, his partner in Payton Power, a heavy-equipment company; Matt Suhey, his former fullback; John Gamauf, the vice president of Bridgestone/Firestone and partners with Walter on a racing team; Linda Conley, his employee at Studebaker’s; Connie, his estranged wife.

While those individuals (with the exception of Connie) did, in fact, find themselves somewhere within the confines of Walter’s miniscule inner circle, the two he confided in most were Ginny Quirk, his executive assistant, and Kimm Tucker, the executive director of the Walter Payton Foundation as well as his director of marketing. Walter Payton, Inc., was now located in suite 340 on the third floor of an office building in Hoffman Estates (Payton was given the space rent-free, in exchange for a couple of appearances on behalf of the landlord), and Payton was there nearly every day alongside the two women. They were, in many respects, his family. “I’ll always remember a talk I had with [former Bears quarterback] Vince Evans when he called the office one day,” said Quirk. “I asked him how he was doing, and he said, ‘Ginny, it’s kind of like being a Vietnam veteran. You go into combat and do things other people don’t. Then you come out of it and you’re supposed to be normal. And you’re not. You work really hard at trying to adjust, but it’s impossible. It’s just impossible.’

“That,” said Quirk, “is what Walter was experiencing.”

Quirk and Tucker came to expect Payton’s manic mood swings—giddy one second, despondent the next. He kept a tub of painkillers inside a desk drawer and popped them regularly. He ate greasy fast foods and gorged on fettuccine carbonara (his favorite dish) and dumped ten sugar packs into each cup of coffee and dunked pork rinds into hot sauce. Though a fast metabolism prevented Payton from gaining excessive weight, they worried how it all impacted his psyche. “He ate junk,” said Conley. “Fettuccine Alfredo with crumbled bacon. Chili dogs. Corn dogs. And fried pork chops, and I mean fried hard.” Never an imbiber as a player, Payton now drank his fair share of beer. He behaved erratically and was prone to strange and confounding moments. Holmes vividly recalled visiting the office for a meeting. “Walter came in and he was bouncing off the walls,” he said. “He was totally incoherent, all hopped up on these painkillers. I remember he turned on his computer and he wanted to show some old porn crap. His eyes were all weird. I said, ‘Walter, what the hell?’ He drank a couple of beers and I couldn’t believe it. Who was this person?”

By this point in his life Payton was convinced that he suffered from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and began taking the Ritalin tablets