Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [241]
Every so often, on Payton’s good days, a surprise guest was allowed to enter the house. Sometimes it’d be Scott Ascher, one of his co-owners of the Roundhouse. Other times Mike Lanigan, a business partner, might appear. Jay Hilgenberg, a teammate for seven seasons with the Bears, came once. “A bunch of the guys stopped by, and Walter and I talked a little golf,” he said. “Walter asked me why I wasn’t coaching with the Bears. I said, ‘Walter, how about you just get that liver and get healthy, and we’ll play some golf together?’ ”
Payton scowled. “Hey,” he snapped, “I’m healthy!”
He wasn’t.
“I felt about this big,” said Hilgenberg, holding an index finger and thumb less than an inch apart. “That was the last time I ever saw him.”
Payton’s illness did at least lead to an important reconciliation. Ever since that day in 1985 when he confronted his teammate about his infidelities, Mike Singletary had been persona non grata in Payton’s life. Now retired as a player and working as a motivational speaker, Singletary—a devoutly religious man whose father had been a Pentecostal preacher—reached out to Payton, via Suhey, in hopes of easing his burden and reintroducing Jesus Christ into his life. By the beginning of fall Singletary was a regular at 34 Mudhank, often conversing at length with Payton about life and death and football and love and eternal salvation. Mostly, Singletary talked and Payton, lying in bed, quietly listened. “I never heard him say, ‘Why me?’ ” Singletary said. “I want to tell you, I know I would have been saying, ‘Why me? Why me? There are other guys out there killing people and doing this—why me?’ I never heard Walter say that.”
“I need to see you.”
The words were spoken by Rob Chudzinski, the tight ends coach for the University of Miami football team. On the other end of the telephone line was Jarrett Payton, the Hurricanes’ freshman halfback. He was sitting in his dormitory room.
“OK, Coach,” Jarrett said. “I’ll be right over.”
Upon entering Chudzinski’s office, Jarrett sat down and heard the words he had hoped would never come. “You have to go home right now to be with your family,” Chudzinski said. “Your father wants you there.”
That night, October 28, 1999, Jarrett boarded a flight from Miami International to O’Hare. He knew few of the details, only that his father was in Waukegan’s Midwestern Regional Medical Center and nearing his last breath.
“I hated hospitals, just like my dad did,” said Jarrett. “So instead of immediately going to see him, I went home, got one of my dad’s cars, and just drove around. Before I left for college, Dad liked to drive around with me for hours. Just the two of us driving. So that’s what I did now. This might sound strange, but driving that day, all alone, I felt like he was hanging with me. It was just the two of us, doing what we loved.”
The preceding few weeks had been rough on Walter. There were several emergency trips to the hospital. No longer able to eat, he was receiving nourishment solely via an intravenous tube. The majority of his time was spent in bed atop an enormous heating pad, and he kept his finger permanently affixed to the morphine pump by his side. “In that last week or two he looked awful,” said Quirk. “His nails were long and yellow. His beard had grown in. I had never seen him with scruff. Ever. This was a guy who would shave a couple of times per day if it fit the need. I had never seen him with a beard. It had grown in gray. He looked like a street person. He was in a hospital bed at that point. The bed was put in Connie’s bedroom, but only because he had no say.”
There are people from Payton’s life who like Quirk and others who considered her to be pushy and overly eager to please. All seem to agree, however, that during Payton’s last stand she had his best interests at heart. Quirk had spent nearly fourteen years glued to Walter’s side, and even as he drove her insane with nonstop calls, she continued to love and defend him.
As Quirk watched her boss and friend fade away, she found herself disgusted. Not by his