the Other Wes Moore (2010) (19 page)

The letter opened with the normal trivial catching-up jokes, but it soon became more serious. Two pieces of news took the wind out of me.

First, Shea had been arrested on drug charges. These weren't simply running or possession charges either. Possession with the intent to distribute was a charge of a completely different magnitude--with serious mandatory sentences. Justin hadn't seen Shea around the neighborhood in a while and, from the sound of it, was not sure when he would again.

The even more devastating piece of news was that Justin's mother was dying. We had noticed changes in his mother for a few years. She moved more slowly than usual and seemed just a beat off. Justin's mother had Hodgkin's disease, a rare form of cancer. The survival rate is around 90 percent for those who discover it early. Unfortunately, his mother was in the other 10 percent. With Justin's older sister away in college, and his father living in Harlem, Justin's role in the family was changing.

Justin was now spending his mornings with her at the hospital, his afternoons at school, then running to basketball practice and back to the hospital. His grades fell dramatically as the burden began to wear him down.

I was halfway through reading the letter when Sean's voice broke my concentration. "You ready, man? I got nothing." I took one final glance at the letter, then carefully folded it back into its envelope and put it in the cargo pocket of my camouflage battle dress uniform. Sean noticed the look on my face and said, "You all right, man? Everything okay?" I told him everything was fine, but a few seconds later I spoke up again. "Hey, Sean, do you ever think about what life would be like if we never came here?"

He looked at me quizzically. "I don't know. About the same, I guess."

"Yeah, I guess."

Even though I'd grown to love military school, I still had mixed feelings about being there, and they were eating at me. I wanted to be home, to talk to Justin after he left the hospital. I didn't know what I'd say, but at least I'd be there. I wanted to be there as my mother and Shani moved back to Maryland and Shani began high school. I remembered what Baltimore could be like, and I wanted to be there to protect Shani and help my mother through the move. I felt like being at military school was keeping me in a bubble, ignorant of what was going on with my people on the outside. There was a comfortable distance between my life now and the levels of confusion that had engulfed me just a few years ago. This uniform had become a force field that kept the craziness of the world outside from getting too close to me, but I wondered if it was just an illusion.

H Company was broken up into two platoons. I was the platoon sergeant for one of them, and a cadet named Dalio was the platoon sergeant for the other. In the Army, there is an old expression that the officers make the orders and the sergeants do all the work; this year, as a cadet platoon sergeant, I was learning how true that was. From the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed, my day was consumed with thinking about my platoon, taking care of them, making sure they were doing well in class, making sure things were fine at home, making sure the building was clean, and on and on, an exhausting litany. Saturday evening, after "Taps," Dalio and I put our guys down to sleep but still had a few hours of leave before we had to be back on campus.

"Want to go grab a stromboli?" Dalio asked. The stromboli is a staple in Pennsylvania cuisine, essentially consisting of a pizza folded on itself, a bread, dairy, and meat concoction held together with copious amounts of grease, classic adolescent comfort food. I was in.

We threw on our dress gray uniforms, including the gray wool pants that scraped every blade of hair off our legs and dark blue cotton shirts. I tightened the navy tie that accompanied the uniform--the tie was wrapped in the same knot I'd used as a freshman.

When you know how to get there, downtown Wayne is only fifteen minutes away from campus. We strolled down the barely lit street, gossiping about the antics of our platoons. About ten minutes into the walk, a red Toyota slowly drove up to us. Thinking the driver just needed directions or help navigating the dark, signless streets, we stopped and peered in. As the driver's window rolled halfway down, the sound of loud rock music and the smell of alcohol met us.

"What are you guys doing?" a slightly overweight teenager with unkempt black hair and a distinctive scar across the top of his forehead asked us.

"Nothing," I replied. Who is this guy? I wondered.

"Don't you mean 'Nothing, sir'?" A voice rang out from the backseat, but with the tinted windows, we couldn't see its source.

"Nothing, sir," I reflexively corrected myself, even without knowing who made the order. I was so accustomed to the rules and protocol on campus that it took me a second to realize I might be responding to the orders of some random drunk kids from town.

"I am Colonel Bose's son, and not only are you rude but your uniforms are in disarray. I am going to report you both." Dalio and I looked at each other, confused about whether this was a legitimate complaint or simply a prank.

Dalio realized the pizza shop would be closing soon, so he tried to end the conversation. "Well, you have our names, so do what you have to do," he said. The car sped away, leaving a trail of blaring music behind it. Dalio and I continued walking down the middle of the street, but our conversation now turned to the odd interaction we'd just had.

"What do you think?" Dalio asked me.

"Probably nothing. Just a bunch of idiots."

Suddenly a speeding car came roaring up behind us. We turned around with just enough time to jump out of the way as the red Toyota from before came within feet of running us both over. We lay there in complete bewilderment, unsure what to do next. The car slowed to a creep after missing us, like a confused predator who'd overrun his prey. Finally, the brake lights appeared. Dalio and I got off the ground, looked at each other, and broke into a sprint, running away from the car now sitting ominously a few yards from us. Just then, another car came down the street. Our drunk attackers were forced to keep moving.

Dalio looked at me and said, "What the hell are we supposed to do?"

That's when the kid from the Bronx started to elbow the cadet sergeant aside. "We keep going to get our pizza. They're done for the night, and if they aren't, we'll see them when they get out of the car," I told him. Dalio was not as convinced, but after kneeling behind a parked car for a few minutes and not hearing or seeing any sign of the red Toyota, he decided that I might be right. Besides, he was still hungry.

We picked up our pace as we walked in the shadows of the tree-lined sidewalks, now avoiding the center of the street. I felt like I was doing my speed-walk to the subway in the Bronx again. Every car that passed made our hearts stop. This was military school, I thought to myself. We were supposed to be protected from this kind of stuff.

We came to an intersection, one of the few lighted paths on our entire journey. Only two hundred yards away from our final destination. The quiet streets and passing minutes without incident had returned our focus to the oozing stromboli and not the Toyota. We were crossing the intersection when I heard a voice yelling.

"Go home, nigger!"

As I turned my head to see where the yell came from, a rock or bottle--something hard--slammed against my mouth.

"I just got hit," I yelled to Dalio, spitting out blood and pieces of tooth into my hand. My tongue searched my top row of teeth, scratching against my now sharp and jagged front tooth, while my mouth filled with blood. We realized the car had been sitting with its headlights off, waiting for us.

After their direct hit, they put on their lights and screeched off. Inside they were still screaming with laughter.

Going to the pizza shop was now off the table. We realized who the target was. I reached into my mouth and wiggled my loose tooth. We moved to a completely dark area behind a collection of bushes to regroup. Dalio, not panicking, said, "Bro, we have got to get back to campus, now."

My mouth was aching. I was beside myself with anger--and still confused. And embarrassed. Embarrassed to be called a nigger in front of my comrade. And embarrassed by my reaction. Because after being called a nigger and having my tooth broken, I'd decided to flee back to campus. Should I have stayed there in the middle of the street, waiting for the boys to come back, somehow gotten them out of their car, and tested them blow for blow? Part of me was aghast when I decided that the answer was no.

I'd only waded into street life in the Bronx; I never got into its deepest, darkest waters. But I'd been around enough street cats to know the code: they hit you with a knife, you find a gun. And I didn't have to be a Black Panther to know that
nigger
was the ultimate fighting word. This was the kind of knowledge we understood, the kind of code that was so deeply fundamental it never had to be fully articulated. But I had to let this one go. I had to look at the bigger picture. My assailant was unknown, unnamed, and in a car. This was not a fair fight, and the best-case scenario was nowhere near as probable as the worst-case scenario.

If I was successful, who knew how the fight would've ended? If I failed, who knew how the fight would've ended?

I thought about my mother and how she would feel if this escalated any further. I thought about my father and the name he chose for me.

We sat silent for a moment, waiting for any movement or lights, but as we'd just learned, darkness and silence did not translate to safety. I told Dalio we had to get back to campus by a different route, one where there were no lights and no streets. I told him to follow me and began to run through a series of front yards to a dark, empty field about a quarter mile from where we started. Dalio was trying to ask me where we were going, but I never slowed or turned around to explain. We did not have time. Hiding behind trees and cars along the way, we systematically moved closer to our goal. The veil of security I thought the uniform provided had been lifted, and now we hustled in our black dress shoes and stained wool pants through dirty fields and grassy yards. Our hearts pounded under our navy blue shirts.

"Where are we?" Dalio asked again when we stopped behind a large rock, staring at the wooded landscape in front of us.

"It's the field that leads us back to school," I replied. This was our chance to get on campus without having to meet up with our attackers again. Dalio had never been here, and most cadets never had a reason to. I had, however; it was one of the first memories I had of my school. This was the same area I'd run through trying to find the Wayne train station, trying to escape.

"Let's go," I whispered and we bolted into the woods. Scared, and angry, we navigated the darkness holding on to trees, using the moon as our guide. Minutes later, we saw the light from the cross perched on the chapel's roof, which was only fifty yards away from our barracks.

The irony of the situation forced me to smile, featuring my newly cracked tooth. Years earlier, I had run through these same woods with all of my might, looking for safety, trying to get away from campus. Tonight, I ran through the same woods looking for safety, but in the other direction.

Part III

Paths Taken and Expectations Fulfilled

I sat again in that large, gray, windowless room with about thirty other people waiting to see their fathers, husbands, sons, boyfriends, and friends. The air in the room was heavy and cold, the chairs hard. There was a vending machine with only a few sad items dangling inside. Small lockers lined the gray walls. We were told to place whatever we carried with us inside them. Nothing unaccounted for could go in--or out of--the secured room that would be our next stop. Out of the thirty people in the room, I was one of only two men. The rest were women and children
.

One by one, the guards called out numbers. After about an hour of waiting, I finally heard mine. I quickly rose and walked over to a desk where bulletproof glass separated me from a corrections officer. The officer threw out the same barrage of questions they always ask. "What is your relation to the inmate? Do you have any electronic equipment or sharp items? Do you have any items you plan on passing on to the inmate?" Eventually they let me into the visitors' room, where I waited for Wes to be escorted in
.

"I wasn't even there that day."

I looked at Wes, speechless. He
still
didn't admit to the armed robbery that had led to his final imprisonment
.

There were days when our unexpected relationship started to seem absurd. What was I doing here, anyway? More than three years earlier, I'd written a letter to a stranger whose story had sat with me for years. We shared a name, but the truth was that I didn't know this man. He was simply an address, a P.O. box, and a personal identification number. A man convicted of murder. And, inevitably, as in every convict cliche I'd ever heard, he claimed innocence
.

But I started to think more about his repeated defense, offered again and again in earnest: "I wasn't even there that day." Did he think that through repetition it would become true? That if he just incanted the phrase enough the prison walls would collapse and he'd be able to walk back home? Did he think it could reverse time? How far back would he have to go to be innocent again?

Wes folded his hands together; his broad shoulders leaned in. We were nearing the end of our get-together. Silence now overrode the conversation. He smiled
.

I decided not to respond directly to this latest protest of his innocence. Instead, I asked a question: "Do you think we're all just products of our environments?" His smile dissolved into a smirk, with the left side of his face resting at ease
.

"I think so, or maybe products of our expectations."

"Others' expectations of us or our expectations for ourselves?"

"I mean others' expectations that you take on as your own."