by Wes Moore
I watched him do his pee-pee dance for a moment, then peeked over at our clock, which sat across the room. I couldn't believe it.
"Bro, it is five-thirty in the morning! You tell them to come get me around eight," I said and yanked my covers tighter around me. "I should be ready to go then."
My roommate somehow managed to look even more dumbfounded. Just as he was opening his mouth to say something, another yell came from the corridor, a single voice now, ordering us into the hallway. My roommate's attention shifted; he wasn't going to waste his time trying to convince me to get up. I was either really brave or really stupid, and he was not going to wait around to see which. Within moments, I was left alone in the room.
Once I had the room to myself again, I rolled over, turning my back to the door, and pulled the covers over my head to avoid the commotion coming from the hallway. Seconds after getting comfortable, I heard the yelling voice with a new clarity. It was right on the other side of my door.
"Why is there only one person outside this room?"
My door slammed open, and in walked First Sergeant Anderson, a high school senior with an impressively premature five-o'clock shadow, a scruffy voice, and the posture and mannerisms of a bulldog. Still half-asleep and turned away from the door--I refused to believe this was happening--I heard the sound of boots approaching my bunk and then stop. And that's when the screaming started. Anderson's anger, efficiently transmitted through his sonorous, full-toned voice, had shifted from general displeasure with all of us to a focused rage pointed in my direction.
"Get your goat-smelling ass out of the rack!
"I am going to smoke you so bad, they will need dental records to identify your body!
"You better get that z monster off your back, turdbird!"
Some of the curses he used I hadn't heard before. But I could figure out they weren't compliments or normal pleasantries.
I turned around so I could face him and was met with a fusillade of saliva as he continued his tirade. Why in the world was he yelling so early in the morning? And who did he think he was, screaming at me like that?
I slowly sat up and wiped the cold out of my eyes. The first sergeant paused for a moment--he saw me moving and must've figured his tantrum had done the trick. As silence finally returned to my room, I moved my hand from my eyes and calmly spoke: "Man, if you don't get out of my room ..."
His eyes widened, then slitted. His angry face broke into a devilish smile. Just as quickly as he'd come into the room, he walked out.
This was my first morning at the military school.
I knew my mother was considering sending me away, but I never thought she'd actually do it. The final straw came one evening while she sat downstairs on the phone listening to my dean from Riverdale explain why they were placing me on academic and disciplinary probation. It wasn't pretty. Bad grades, absence from classes, and an incident with a smoke bomb were just some of the reasons he rattled off as my mother sat silently on the couch with the phone to her ear. Her conviction was increasing with every bad report. Meanwhile, upstairs, Shani and I sat in my room watching television--or trying to. Our eighteen-inch color television, topped with a wire hanger where the antenna should have been, was a blizzard of snow. I got bored and looked around for alternative entertainment. The only thing available was my sister. I began to lightly punch her in the arm, first with my right fist, then with my left, trying to get her to pay attention to me. She stubbornly kept staring at the ghostly images of Pat Sajak and Vanna White flickering through breaks in the snow. Eventually she told me to stop, never taking her eyes off the screen, but I kept on aiming blows at her shoulder. Boredom in teenage boys is a powerful motivation to create chaos. At that moment, Shani's arm was my time filler.
Finally fed up, Shani turned to tell me to stop and, as she did, my right knuckles skipped off her shoulder and into her bottom lip, which immediately stained red.
In more shock than pain, Shani saw this as an opportunity. "Oooooh, Ima get you now," she said. She smiled slyly as the blood covered her bottom row of teeth.
The smile faded, and her bottom lip began to tremble. Her eyes filled with tears. And then came the scream...
"Mommy! Westley hit me in the face, and I'm bleeding really bad!"
Damn.
I tried to stop her from running to my mother, but she beat me to the door and began a full sprint down the hallway. Her screaming continued as she disappeared down the stairs. Her acting was stellar, and since she still had the blood on her rapidly swelling lip and the crocodile tears streaming down her face, I knew the evidence was against me. There was nothing left to do but wait. I sat back in front of the television and watched as Vanna came briefly into view, strutting across stage to turn a blank tile into the letter R.
When I heard my mother coming up the stairs, I braced myself. She walked into my room, tired from her long day at work, disappointed by the conversation she'd just had with my dean, and furious after seeing her youngest with a split lip that her only son had given her. As soon as she came close enough, I tried to plead my case, but as it turned out, she had nothing to say. She simply pulled her right hand back and slapped me.
The burn consumed the entire left side of my face. Not willing to show fear or weakness, I stood there looking back at her. I guess she was expecting tears or apologies. When neither came, she reached back and unloaded another slap to my face. She looked at me again, waiting for a reaction. My jaws clenched, and my hands balled into fists. By this time, I was five inches taller than she was, and my recently defined shoulders, biceps, and triceps made me look older than my age. Every reflex inside said to strike back, but I didn't. How could I? She was my everything, the person I loved and respected most in my world. I had no idea what to do.
Neither did my mother, it seemed. Her almond-shaped eyes were overflowing with anger, disappointment, and confusion, and maybe even a little fear. I would never have hit my mother. But in my room, at that moment, she was not so sure. She looked at me as if for the first time. The days when she could physically intimidate me were clearly over.
She turned around and walked out of the room. She was devastated. She was losing her son, and she was not sure how to turn the tide. We didn't know it at the time, but once alone, we both started to cry.
After my first sergeant left the room, I lay back down and pulled the covers back over myself. As my head hit the pillow, I smirked to think that I could make them leave my room so easily. I was from the Bronx, after all, maybe these country jokers were intimidated. Maybe I could manage this military school thing.
Moments later the door slammed opened again, hitting the wall so hard flakes of the crusty blue paint chipped off. My entire chain of command, eight large and angry teenagers, entered the room and, without saying a word, picked my mattress up off the top bunk and turned it over, dropping me five feet to the cold, hard, green-tiled floor.
Welcome to military school.
Valley Forge Military Academy is in Wayne, Pennsylvania. It's on the prestigious Main Line, just twenty-five minutes outside Philadelphia, on a rolling campus surrounded by overgrown foliage. It was a more austere version of Riverdale, a far cry from my Bronx neighborhood. Our days began before the sun came up and ended well after it retired. Over our first few days we would learn how to shine our shoes using Kiwi black shoe polish, a cotton rag, and a pretty disgusting amount of saliva. We would learn how to execute military commands and repeat our drill and ceremony so many times that "right face," "left face," and "parade rest" became as familiar as our own names. We would learn how to "square our meals," a way of eating that forced us to slow down and savor the sometimes unidentifiable cuisine we were forced to eat, and "square the corridors," which required marching around the entire hallway to leave the building, even if the exit was only a few steps away from your room. Our birth names were irrelevant, as were our past acquaintances and past accomplishments and past failures. We were the same now. We were nothing. In fact, we were less than nothing. We were
plebes.
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 s
till 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.