the Other Wes Moore (2010) (10 page)

But Wes rationalized. I am not actually selling drugs. All I'm doing is talking into a headset. He wasn't exactly excelling in the classroom, and his disenchantment with school was beginning to wear on him. All he really wanted to do was either play football professionally or become a rapper. If he could earn some cash in the meantime--just a little pocket money to hold him over till he was running in the end zone of RFK Stadium or rocking a sold-out crowd in Madison Square Garden--why not? This game didn't require studying or exams. It didn't require a degree or vocational skills. All he needed was ambition. And guts. And, as Wes was soon to understand, an ability to live with constant fear. But Wes wasn't focused on that yet. He didn't bother thinking about Tony's warnings, that no matter what job or position you took within it, this was a game for keeps--you could be in jail or dead in a matter of months.

Besides watching Tony, Wes's first real interaction with drugs had taken place a few months earlier, just before the move out to Baltimore County. It was late November, early in the morning. Wes was already up and showered, finishing some cold breakfast cereal with his book bag next to his leg, when Mary left to go to work. The moment he heard the door slam, Wes rushed to the window and watched as his mother slowly pulled out of her parking spot and joined the flow of city-bound traffic.

Wes had no intention of going to school. He was supposed to meet Woody later--they were going to skip school with some friends, stay at Wes's house, and have a cookout. Woody was bringing the hot dogs and burgers, Wes would be responsible for firing up the grill. Just the thought of hanging out with his boys and imagining the smell of barbecued hot dogs made Wes happy. He moved toward his mother's bedroom. Wes began his ritual search for change in her closet, but the jar was not in its usual place. Wes paused. Had she caught on?

As Wes rummaged through the closet, moving clothes and boxes from one side to the other, he came across a small see-through bag packed with a green substance. It looked like a collection of moss held together by some small sticks. But Wes knew exactly what he had stumbled on. He had just found his mother's weed stash. After a moment to think about whether he should take it, he came to the obvious conclusion: he was going to turn this barbecue into a real party.

Wes put the bag in his pocket and went outside to wait for Woody. As soon as he saw his friend turn the corner, he yelled in excitement, "Wait till you see what I've got!" Woody hustled over, and after they exchanged dap, Wes pulled out the bag. Woody instantly knew what they were working with. His eyes lit up, and he snatched the bag from Wes, opened the top a crack, and took a deep whiff like an old pro. Then he smiled. "Where did you get this, man?" Woody asked.

Wes told the story, and they exchanged a conspiratorial look. Their plans for the day had changed.

Within minutes, Wes and Woody had hooked up with some older kids who were also skipping class that day. The boys all hopped on their bikes and rode to the corner store, where they picked up some Mad Dog 20/20 and rolling papers and, within a half hour, the party was getting started.

The boys found a spot under a bridge near the Morgan State University campus. Since Wes had been the one to discover the smoke, he was granted the privilege of the first hit. Wes knew all about weed but had never actually tried it. He cautiously put the rolled-up joint to his mouth and inhaled. He broke out into a spastic fit of coughing almost as soon as the joint passed his lips. The older boys laughed. But Wes kept at it. With each inhalation, the smoke passed more easily, and by the third toke, he was taking deep puffs and holding them in his lungs for several seconds before blowing a white cloud back out through his nose and mouth.

But after a few hits, Wes was disappointed. "I don't see what the big deal is, man."

"Just wait a little while. You'll feel it," Woody said.

The boys sat under the bridge drinking malt liquor and smoking as the morning quickly turned to afternoon. After a while they got hungry and decided to head to ABC, the fast-food Chinese food restaurant up the hill from their neighborhood. As soon as Wes stood up, he stumbled back to the ground.

"Told you he would feel it soon," Woody said, laughing. Wes slowly rose again, this time making it to his feet, and shuffled along, trying to get his bearings.

The bike ride to ABC usually took around five minutes, but this time it took the boys almost twenty because of Wes's slow pace. Wes joked about it, putting on a charade around his friends, but it was the most uncomfortable and vulnerable he had ever felt. Once they entered the restaurant, Wes quickly sat down to avoid collapsing. The rest of his boys got in line to order their food.

"You see that girl over there!" Wes shouted to Woody, as Woody stood in line to order a carton of fried rice.

"What girl?" Woody responded, looking puzzled.

"The one right there, with the red dress." Wes pointed to the other side of the restaurant. "Honey is thick!"

Woody looked at Wes and then turned to look at the other guys. Once they caught one another's eyes, they started cracking up.

"Dude is tripping! No more bud for you, yo!" one of the boys said. It didn't hit Wes until a few seconds later as he cleared his eyes. The "girl" he was admiring on the other side of the room was actually a trash can. Wes was a lot higher than he thought.

After the Chinese food stop, Wes decided it was time to head home. He began the slow, painful journey back down the hill, his stomach still empty after he'd tried unsuccessfully to eat at the restaurant, his head aching from the THC now swimming through his body. Each revolution of the bike pedals was more painful than the last, and all Wes wanted to do was lie down and forget the morning. The barbecue was canceled. Lying in bed was the only thing on the agenda.

When Wes got to the house, his mother's boyfriend, who was living with them when he wasn't back home with his wife, was sitting in the living room, directly next to the front door.

"What's up, Wes, you're home early," Wes heard as he stumbled through the door. The television blasting in the background made Wes's head throb even more. He closed his arms around his head and rushed past his mother's boyfriend with a quick "hey," beelining it to his room. He was in bed with all of his clothes on and his pillow over his head when he heard a knock at the door. It was his mother's boyfriend checking on him.

"Please leave me alone. I'm fine, just a little sick," Wes yelled out, but his voice was barely audible through the pillow pressed tightly against his face.

The boyfriend knew exactly what was bothering Wes. He'd smelled the liquor as soon as Wes staggered through the door.

Hours later, when Mary walked into Wes's room, the high had begun to wear off, but Wes was still in bed, thinking about the day's events.

"How do you feel?" Mary asked, intentionally speaking loudly. She gave her son a sarcastic yet toothy smile.

"Please hold it down, Ma! I hear you just fine," Wes pleaded, feeling his head begin to pound again.

Mary laughed, watching him squirm. "Well, at least now you know how bad it feels and you will stay away from drinking," she said.

Wes now knew for sure how powerful drugs could be. He felt a strange sense of having passed a test, graduated to a new level of maturity. It was exhilarating. As he lay in bed, he realized how time seemed to stop when he was high, how the drug--smoking it, feeling its effects, recovering from it--made him forget everything else. And he understood, faintly, how addictive that feeling could be, and how easy it would be to make some money off selling that feeling to people who needed it.

As Wes placed the headset over his freshly cut fade and adjusted it, he remembered this story. The headset now fit perfectly. There was definitely money to be made.

Part II

Choices and Second Chances

"Happy birthday!"

Wes gave me a half smile. "Thanks, man, I almost totally forgot."

As the rest of the country celebrated independence, Wes spent his thirty-second birthday in prison. He's allowed to have visitors only on odd days of the year, so he was prohibited from seeing people on the Fourth of July. I visited a couple of days after his actual birthday
.

When I arrived at Jessup that morning, my eyes flickered up to the sign mounted above the institution's steel front doors, the name of the prison--Jessup Correctional Institution--inked in bloody crimson. I stopped walking for a moment and stood in silence. It was midday. Over the towers of the prison the summer sun was high in the center of a cloudless sky. I looked up at the vast canopy of blue above, then took a deep breath, feeling the fresh air race through me. For the first time in a long time I was reminded of the daily miracle of my freedom, the ability to move, explore, meet new people, or simply enjoy the sun beating down on my face
.

After going through the requisite security checks, I waited for Wes to walk into the waiting area. I studied the reunions taking place around me. One inmate, a young man seemingly in his early twenties, sat across from a woman with a baby squirming in her arms--he was apparently meeting his own child for the first time
.
His girlfriend complained that since the kid hadn't slept through the whole night since he was born, neither had she. Another inmate listened wide-eyed as his grandmother ran down a list of his friends from the neighborhood, updating him on what they'd been up to since he'd gone away. He hung on her every word
.

When my conversations with Wes had begun years earlier, we'd said only what we thought the other wanted to hear. What the other needed to hear. But over time it was hard to keep up the act, and our conversations drifted toward an almost therapeutic honesty
.

"When did you feel like you'd become a man?" Wes asked me, a troubled look on his face
.

"I think it was when I first felt accountable to people other than myself. When I first cared that my actions mattered to people other than just me." I answered quickly and confidently, but I wasn't too sure of what I was talking about. When
did
I actually become a man? There was no official ceremony that brought my childhood to an end. Instead, crises or other circumstances presented me with adult-sized responsibilities and obligations that I had to meet one way or another. For some boys, this happens later--in their late teens or even twenties--allowing them to grow organically into adulthood. But for some of us, the promotion to adulthood, or at least its challenges, is so jarring, so sudden, that we enter into it unprepared and might be undone by it
.

Wes, feeding off my answer, attempted to finish my thought. "Providing for others isn't easy. And the mistakes you make trying are pretty unforgiving." He paused. I waited. He rubbed his chin, softly pulling at the long strands of his goatee with his fingers. "And second chances are pretty fleeting."

"What do you mean?"

"From everything you told me, both of us did some pretty wrong stuff when we were younger. And both of us had second chances. But if the situation or the context where you make the decisions don't change, then second chances don't mean too much, huh?"

Wes and I stared at each other for a moment, surrounded by the evidence that some kids were forced to become adults prematurely. These incarcerated men, before they'd even reached a point of basic
maturity, had flagrantly--and tragically--squandered the few opportunities they'd had to contribute productively to something greater than themselves
.

I sat back, allowing Wes's words to sink in. Then I responded, "I guess it's hard sometimes to distinguish between second chances and last chances."

Marking Territory
1990

"Dude, I am going to ask you one more time. Where did you get the money from?"

Tony's fists were clenched and his jaw tense as he eyed his little brother up and down. His stare was serious, and his stance like that of a trained boxer preparing to pounce. Wes's body language was evasive. He refused to look his brother in the eye.

Tony had come by the house that morning to see Wes and his mother. When he strolled past Wes's room, he noticed it had changed significantly since the last time he saw it. One wall was covered with a tower of sneaker boxes--inside the boxes were a rainbow assortment of Nikes, each pair fresher than the last. The smell of barely touched leather seemed to fill the room. It was like walking into Foot Locker.

Tony found his younger brother and asked for an explanation for the leaning tower of Nikes. Wes stuttered out a story: he'd become a popular DJ in the neighborhood and was making incredible loot DJing parties. It was the story he'd used with Mary, and she'd bought it whole. Maybe because she really believed him. Maybe because she really wanted to believe him. She'd asked Wes about the shoes when they started to multiply, but after her first inquisition, she'd left the subject alone.

Tony knew better.

Tony had now spent over a decade dealing drugs and knew how much money could be made in the game. He also knew there was no way for someone as young as Wes to make that kind of money DJing. There were not enough records to spin, enough beats to play, to buy that many sneakers.

Tony grabbed Wes's shirt collar and pulled him in close. "How many times do I have to tell you to leave this stuff alone, man?" His tone was low and serious, but he barked his words out like a challenge as the two boys squared off on their front lawn, out of sight of Mary, who was inside the house.

Wes's eyebrows arched up and his voice rose, his best play at sincerity. "I told you, man, I made this money DJing!" he repeated, almost convincing himself that it was the truth.

Tony closed his eyes and asked again, pounding out every word. "Wes. Where. Did. You. Get. The. Money?"

"I made the money D----"