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thought,” said Eddie. “Even we didn’t. We both felt we were good enough to start together, so it was something we’d expected. When you expect something, it’s not shocking or overly memorable.” On the Devils’ dirt-and-rock-coated field, Jackson State won 17–7, with Eddie running for his tenth touchdown of the season to take hold of the SWAC scoring lead. Walter’s longest run was a twenty-yard burst up the middle on the second play of the game. He also kicked a seventeen-yard field goal and two extra points. Had Ole Miss or Mississippi State started brothers at running back, the media crush would have been overwhelming. The Clarion-Ledger marked the Payton pairing by not even mentioning it in the following day’s paper, and misspelling Payton (as “Peyton”) five different times.

“It was never surprising,” said Eddie. “Just really pathetic.”

The Tigers won their final two games of the season, finishing with a 9-1-1 record (mere percentage points behind Grambling for the conference title) and sealing Hill’s anointment as the SWAC Coach of the Year. Eddie led the team with 799 rushing yards, and Walter followed with 651 more. He also kicked three field goals and thirteen extra points.

“Walter spent his first year showing us how good he could be,” said Hill, “and the next three years turning into a legend.”

CHAPTER 7

SOUL

THERE ARE NICE BELTS AND THERE ARE UGLY BELTS. AND AT JACKSON STATE College, there was Mary Jones’ extra-special belt.

The bullet one.

Yes, you read that correctly. Somewhere within Mississippi’s capital city in the early 1970s, there was an eighteen-year-old female student from Tunica, Mississippi, with short straight hair, brown eyes, long legs, an engaging personality, and a belt featuring the bullets of an M16 assault rifle.

Jones purchased the accessory at a vintage clothing store in Oklahoma during a field trip several years earlier, when she served as a majorette in the Rosa Fort High School marching band. “To be honest, the bullets were replicas,” said Jones. “But they looked real, and the belt was neat—brown, with these gold bullets covering it. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to buy it.”

Jones arrived on Jackson State’s campus in May 1972. Fresh off of high school graduation, she enrolled in summer school and asked Earl Dishman, a pal from back home, to drive her to campus. “He had my clothes in his car, and he dropped me off and said he’d be back in a few hours,” Jones recalled. “Well, Earl had some friends on the other side of Jackson and he decided to stay with them. I didn’t see him for a week.”

Jones found herself stuck in wardrobe purgatory. She had a dorm room to live in and cafeteria food to eat, but no spare clothing. “So every day for my first entire week on campus I wore the same thing—the same jumpsuit, the same bullet belt,” she said. “People started looking at me and saying, ‘Hey, Bullet!’ They never called me Mary again. Always Bullet.”

Before long, Mary “Bullet” Jones became famous at Jackson State for two things: her ubiquitous belt and her out-of-this-galaxy dancing skills.

Beginning when she was a little girl, Bullet emulated her mother, Mary Francis Jones, as she boogied around the house, arms waving, rump shaking. By the time she reached Jackson State, Bullet was as dazzling a dance-floor practitioner as many had ever seen. “Boy, could she groove,” said Coolidge Anderson, editor of the Blue and White Flash. “Weren’t many people on campus who worked it like Bullet did.”

Well, there was one. If Bullet was Jackson State’s Ginger Rogers, its Fred Astaire was Walter Payton. Throughout a freshman year noteworthy for gridiron excellence, Payton generated equally rave reviews for his improvisational dance talents. Wherever one looked, he could find Walter dancing. Inside classrooms. Within the corridors of Sampson Hall. Standing in line for lunch. On the bus rides to away games. “He danced just like Rerun from What’s Happening!!” said Jackie Slater, an offensive lineman who went on to a twenty-year NFL career. “The moves were crazy and wild and extremely athletic.