Free Walter & Me by Paul Brown, Eddie Payton, Craig Wiley Page B

was going to catch me. I was too fast for them, and they all knew it. They started telling me I should go out for football in high school, and I knew that the playground wasn’t the only area where I was way ahead of them. I already knew I’d be going out for football in the fall during my freshman year. There was no question about that. The one question I did have was, would I make the team? Well, all my playground shakin’ and bakin’ had me convinced the answer was “yes.” There wasn’t a shadow of doubt in my mind about it. But that’s not to say there wasn’t a different sort of shadow hanging around the Payton house. The day I made the high school football team, I became the big man on campus, and Walter was now the little man in my shadow.
    I felt good about my upcoming first season in organized football. I felt mature and ready to take on the world. I was practicing at a high level, and the stage was set for opening night of the “Eddie Payton Show.” When I imagined my family beaming with pride as I took the field, I’d practice harder. When I closed my eyes, I’d see everyone going nuts as I waltzed into the end zone, and I’d practice harder still. I could hear all of my soon-to-be fans telling me to break a leg out there on the field, and that’s exactly what I did. I practiced so hard one day that it ended with a nasty fracture about an inch above my knee. Just like that, my imaginary stardom came crashing down. My freshman season was over before it started, and the shadow Walter was in started to engulf me, too. It was a dark, dark shadow…not at all like my doctor.
    Frank Fortenberry was his name, and he was one of the few white doctors who’d take black patients. I wasn’t really worried about whether my doctor was black or white, though. I was worried about whether his news would be good or bad. And it wasn’t good. After looking at my X-rays, he came to my room trying to explain to me that if he set the leg, with a break so close to the growth line, it would probably stop growing. In short, one leg would be longer than the other, and I knew that would make it nearly impossible to keep playing running back and linebacker, especially at the level I’d planned on playing. No more shakin’ and bakin’, no more fakin’ and quakin’. There would just be breakin’ and achin’ for little ol’ me.
    Momma and Coach Boston were in the room when I heard the news, and they could tell I was devastated. But Doc Fortenberry wasn’t done talking. He had something else up his sleeve, and he was fixin’ to pull it out on us.
    “I’ve been toyin’ with this idea,” he said to my mother. “I’ve seen it done before, but I’ve never done it myself. If we put a pin through Eddie’s leg to hold it still, and then place his leg in a pulley with weights while it grows together and heals, it might reduce the chance of one leg being shorter than the other.”
    Momma and Coach didn’t seem too happy to hear all the “I’ve never done it myself” stuff, and the idea of using pulleys and weights to reduce the chances of one leg being shorter than the other didn’t give any of us much confidence that I would ever play ball again, much less have two legs that were the same length. But we didn’t really have much of a choice at the time, and we agreed we wanted to try anything that could work. Anything at all—even pulleys and weights and a white doctor who’d never done any of it himself.
    So, we reluctantly agreed to a six-week stay in the hospital. Still, Coach in particular was pretty worried that Doc Fortenberry was going to ruin my leg. Coach was probably angrier at the message, but he directed it toward the messenger. Good thing for Doc Fortenberry that he was such a huge man, or I think Coach might’ve put an ass-whoopin’ on him right then and there. Momma wasn’t exactly all warm and fuzzy about it either.
    I think the less-than-enthusiastic response Doc got about the whole thing from