Wright Thompson / ESPN.com

Heisman winner Billy Cannon (left) stands next to coach Paul Dietzel for the 50th anniversary of the 1958 LSU team

ANGOLA, La. — The prison dentist walks slowly down the gravel road past the warden’s house. He is stooped, with a big belly, two white tufts of hair and a bald spot. He’s got a bulbous nose and a creak in his step. But look closer. There are still pieces of the man he used to be. He moves with a subtle feline grace. He’s got the deepest blue eyes, familiar somehow, like an old photograph. They seem to only absorb information, never giving anything away. He’s alone, carefully making his way from the party to his white Ford truck. He’s been on display long enough.

“I’m going to play with my horses,” Dr. Billy Cannon says.

Even in his 72nd year, people can’t help looking at him. They see only the broadest strokes: the LSU football hero who fell unimaginably far. Almost no one is allowed to see deeper. He doesn’t like to be inspected — once he saw me taking notes in a hotel lobby and barked, “Put that damn book up” — because his life then becomes the property of the observer.

Of course, what he likes hasn’t mattered for a long time now. For the past half century, he has existed mostly through the eyes of others, the narrative of his life in their control. They stare, they whisper, they point. They wonder what to make of his hard exterior, or the gruff responses he gives to strangers, or the fact that he has spent much of the past two decades in virtual seclusion. For years, the few people he allowed to come close were left with more questions than answers. Does he know who he is? Does he know what he means? Are his days filled with regret? Strangers yearn to know him, yet he seems unknowable, to the men who played with him, maybe even to himself. He gave me more time than he’s ever given a writer before, and for every moment I thought I understood him, there were two more that made me sure I didn’t know what he thought about anything. His own college coach says he didn’t really like the younger, more arrogant version of this old man inching down the hill.

Still, people keep trying, like the guy earlier today, at the party before the annual prison rodeo. He spotted the dentist across the warden’s front yard, began the slow but inevitable dance over, until, finally, they stood just feet apart.

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