the Other Wes Moore (2010) (15 page)

My squad leader, Sergeant Austin, a blond sophomore from Connecticut with green eyes and a sneaky smile, would go off on one of us and then announce, "Don't take this personally, I hate you all just the same." I was given this dubious reassurance more than others.

For those first few days, I woke up furious and went to bed even more livid. The target of my rage was my mother. How could she send me away? How could she force me into a military school before I was even a teenager? When she dropped me off the first day, I was in full ice grille mode, lip curled, eyes squinting, with my "screw the world" face on, ready for battle--but inside I was bewildered. I felt betrayed. I felt more alone than ever.

By the end of the fourth day at military school, I had run away four times. I had heard that there was a station somewhere in Wayne where I could catch a train that would take me to Thirtieth Street Station in Philadelphia. From there I could transfer to a train that would take me to Penn Station in New York, which would take me to the Number 2 subway train, which would drop me off on the grimy streets that would take me home. I had the entire plan set. The only thing I couldn't figure out was how to get to this train station in Wayne.

One morning, my roommate and I were in our tight five-by-eight room, sitting on our respective wooden chairs, shining our shoes. My roommate was from Brooklyn, and we were the only two New Yorkers in the entire unit. I partially blamed him for my being in military school, because it was his grandmother who'd first told my mother about Valley Forge. My roommate's uncle had graduated from the school years earlier and was now a successful business executive. So when my mom, who was friendly with their family, was looking for a new environment for me, they enthusiastically recommended this school. Paralleling my mom's insistence that I attend Riverdale because John F. Kennedy had once gone to school there, she was won over to Valley Forge when she heard that General Norman Schwarzkopf was a graduate. This was right after the first Gulf War, and General Schwarzkopf was seen as the second coming of General MacArthur. There was no military history in my family, but for them, as for many immigrant families, American heroes--and the schools they attended--carried a certain cachet. I glanced at my roommate, burning with resentment.

I had just finished shining the tip of my left shoe and was scooping out a helping of polish for the right shoe when our door opened.

"Ten-hut!" my roommate yelled, jumping to his feet upon seeing our squad leader enter the room. I followed suit.

Sergeant Austin looked directly at my roommate and told him to leave the room. My roommate quickly dropped the rest of his shining kit and scurried out, shutting the door behind him. I had no idea what I'd done this time, but it couldn't be good. I was afraid that something serious was about to happen, and Austin had cleared the room because he wanted no witnesses. I stood at attention but braced myself for whatever was about to go down.

To my surprise, Austin told me to sit down. I dropped into my chair but stayed tense. Austin grabbed my roommate's chair, turning it around like we were old buddies about to have a heart-to-heart. He looked at me, almost with pity, and said, "Listen, Moore, you don't want to be here, and quite honestly, we don't want you here, so I have drawn you a map of how to get to the train station."

He handed me a guidon, a manila-colored book the size of a small spiral notebook that contained all of the "knowledge" we had to memorize in order to make the transition from plebe to new cadet. The book included items such as the mission statement of the school, the honor code, the cadet resolution, and all of the military and cadet ranks. More important to me at the time, the back of the book had an aerial map of the Wayne area and, on this particular copy, handwritten notes with clear directions to the train station.

I looked at the map and was momentarily struck dumb. There was nothing I wanted more than to join my friends, to see my family, to leave this place. To see my mother. Here was my squad leader, for whom I had no love, giving me what felt like one of the greatest gifts I had ever received. The burden of loneliness was suddenly lifted. Someone finally understood me. This map was my path to freedom. This map was my path home.

When I looked up from the map and into the eyes of Sergeant Austin, happiness overwhelmed me. I smiled uncontrollably and thanked him. "I will never forget you!" I proclaimed. He rolled his eyes and simply said, "Yeah, just get out of here." He stood up from the chair, and I got up and snapped to attention, showing the first real sign of respect I had given him since walking through the gates. As he exited the room, shutting the door behind him, my mind was spinning. I began to plan my great escape.

At 10:00 every night, "Taps" was played by a military bugler in the main parade area. "Taps" denoted the end of the day. The hauntingly slow anthem played loudly as the entire corps stopped and stood in the deferential parade rest position until the final note ended. "Taps" is also played at funerals, a way of paying homage to lost comrades. I bowed my head but couldn't suppress a smile. I knew this would be the last time I would have to endure this depressing song.

I set my alarm for midnight, thinking that would be late enough for everyone to be asleep but early enough to give me a significant head start before the predawn nightmare of wake-up call repeated itself. I could begin my journey back home undisturbed. My alarm clock, which was no larger than the palm of my hand, sat under my pillow so when the alarm went off, it would be loud enough for me, and only me, to hear. My night bag, which contained only a flashlight, a few changes of clothes, and a granola bar, sat under my bunk bed, packed and ready to go. It was
The Shawshank Redemption
, and I was about to become Andy Dufresne.

Two hours after "Taps," I was up and tiptoeing through the hallways until I hit the bloodred door that took me into the night. With nothing but a bag over my shoulder, a map and directions written on the back of the guidon in my left hand, and a tiny flashlight in my right hand, I was gone. I never looked back at Wheeler Hall, my residence building, as I quietly bolted through the door. Goodbye and good riddance, I thought.

I followed the map to a tee, pacing my steps, trying to identify the landmarks that my squad leader had highlighted. The quarter moon was not providing much light, so I trained my pen-size flashlight on the guidon. The map was leading me in directions I hadn't seen in my brief time at the school, through bushes and brush that quickly turned to trees and forests. But I stuck to the directions, and to hope, and imagined that, in a short time, the trees would open up and reveal the train station sitting there waiting for me. Minutes later, that hope was rapidly diminishing. In its place was a different feeling. Terror.

As I patrolled through the forest, my movie-saturated imagination began to run wild. I was having hallucinations. I started to hear snakes and bears and other wild animals. The affluent suburb of Wayne might as well have been the Serengeti the way I imagined animals surrounding me. I was against the ropes in my battle with fear, and I lost my bearing, my pace count, my control. Finally, I sat down on a rock that I could have sworn I had just tripped over ten paces back and began to cry. I was defeated. I had never wanted anything more in my life than to leave that school, and I was slowly coming to the realization that it was not going to happen.

As I sat on the rock weeping, I heard the rustling of leaves and brush behind me. I had been imagining wild animals for a while now, but these sounds were more intense. My ears perked up, and my head snapped to attention. I turned in the direction of the sounds and suddenly heard a chorus of laughter. Out of the darkness came the members of my chain of command, including my new "friend," Sergeant Austin.

Bastard, I thought.

The directions he had given me were fake. They'd led me nowhere but to the middle of the woods.

Without a fight, I got up from the rock and walked with them back to campus. With my head bowed, we entered the main building and went straight to my tactical officer's office.

Colonel Battaglioli, or Colonel Batt, as we called him, sat in his office as my chain of command led me in. I was broken, dead-eyed, with my night bag still on my shoulder and the utterly useless folded map in my pocket. Colonel Batt was a retired Army officer with twenty-six years in the service. He had served all over the world, including combat tours in Vietnam. He walked fast, his body at a forty-five-degree angle to the ground, as if he was leaning into every step. When he saluted, it seemed like the force of his entire body went into it. He spoke like an understudy for Al Pacino, all spit and curved vowels. He was new to the job at Valley Forge, we were his first plebe class, and I was his first major challenge.

Plebe system is a process all new arrivals must go through in order to earn the title of new cadet. As a plebe, you refer to yourself in the third person: "This plebe would like to go to the bathroom." "This plebe requests permission to eat." In plebe system, your plebe brothers are all you have to make it through. And to ensure that, there is no communication with the outside world. No phone calls, no televisions, no radios, no visits.

Colonel Batt looked at my eyes--which were downcast and barely open--and realized that if he didn't bend the rules just slightly, he would lose me for good.

"Look at me, Moore," he firmly commanded. I lifted my eyes.

Colonel Batt continued. "I am going to let you talk on the phone for five minutes, and that is it for the rest of plebe system. Call who you need to, but you had better be snapped out of this when that phone hangs up."

I looked around the room and saw four members of my chain of command looking down on me. I also noticed a man I had not seen before but whose presence dominated the room, demanding not only focus but respect. He was black, stood about five ten, and carried a muscular 210 pounds or so. He peered down on me through his glasses with a laserlike intensity. His uniform was pressed so sharp you could have cut paper with the cuffs on his khaki shorts. He appeared to be still a teenager but carried an old soul and a frighteningly serious demeanor. He didn't say a word, but he didn't have to. His look said it all.

Colonel Batt handed me the phone, and I dialed the only number I knew by heart. As the phone rang, I began to think about what I would say in five minutes to convince my mother to let me back home.

"Hello?" Her voice was groggy, reminding me that it was one o'clock in the morning.

"Hey, Ma, it's me!" I said a little too loud, excited to hear her voice after what had been the four longest days of my life.

She got nervous at the sound of my voice. She wasn't supposed to hear from me for at least another month. She asked if everything was all right, and I assured her I was fine. Then I started my five-minute campaign to come home.

"Ma, I know I haven't been perfect, but I promise to do better. I will pay attention in school and go more often. I will clean my room, I will clean your room, I will--"

She cut me off. "Wes, you are not going anywhere until you give this place a try. I am so proud of you, and your father is proud of you, and we just want you to give this a shot. Too many people have sacrificed in order for you to be there."

I had no idea then, but I later found out just what sacrifices she was talking about. When she first heard about Valley Forge, she told my grandparents about her plan. They were strongly in favor of the idea. The problem was that military school is not free. It's not even cheap. The price tag for Valley Forge was even steeper than that for Riverdale. My mother had written to family and friends, asking them to help her however they could. "I wouldn't ask if I didn't really need it," she wrote. Weeks later, she was still thousands of dollars short.

My grandparents knew that I was at a crucial juncture in my life. These forks in the road can happen so fast for young boys; within months or even weeks, their journeys can take a decisive and possibly irrevocable turn. With no intervention--or the wrong intervention--they can be lost forever. My mother made the decision to intervene--and decided that overdoing it was better than doing nothing at all. She felt my environment needed to change and my options needed to expand. Drastically. My grandparents agreed.

They put most of their money into the home, hoping to use their equity to support themselves in retirement, when they would return to Jamaica to be with family and friends. Now that my grandparents knew they were needed in the Bronx, their desire to move back to Jamaica had faded. Their children and grandchildren were here. Their friends and doctors were here. And more than that, they now considered themselves not Jamaicans who were living in America but Americans of Jamaican descent.

My grandparents took the money they had in the home in the Bronx, decades of savings and mortgage payments, and gave it to my mother so that she could pay for my first year of military school.

As I sat on the other end of the line, listening to my mother talk about "sacrifice," I had no idea what my grandparents had given up. The five minutes went fast, and Colonel Batt signaled it was time for me to hang up and go to bed. "I love you, and I am proud of you. And, Wes, it's time to stop running," my mother said as I hung up.

I was sent back to my room to lie down for the three hours before I would be driven awake again by the same trash-can-drumming, light-flashing, music-blaring, insult-laden wake-up call as every other godforsaken morning in this hellhole.

The next day, as we prepared to head to second mess, which was what they tellingly called lunch, I noticed the black man from the night before standing next to Colonel Batt. They were talking and looking in my direction. Even when I was standing at attention with my eyes to the front, their piercing gazes felt like they were burning a hole through me. Finally the two men saluted, and the black man walked back toward F Company, the college freshmen and sophomores. It was known around the entire corps as the most squared away, the most impressive company. Its members were the best marchers, the most athletic, the most disciplined. Whoever was in charge of them was doing an amazing job. I wondered whether that man who was talking to Colonel Batt was going to fall into the ranks, but as my eyes followed him, I heard the thunderous sound of 120 men all snapping to attention. Nineteen-year-old Cadet Captain Ty Hill took his place at the front of F Company.