The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates

One day while harassing his sister, Moore accidentally splits her lip and gets in serious trouble. His mother had already had a disappointing conversation with the dean at Riverdale. She slapped Moore twice, hard across the face. He recalls, “She was devastated. She was losing her son, and she was not sure how to turn the tide” (89). Her solution turned out to be the Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania.

At Valley Forge, Moore’s days began before sunrise and ended long after sunset. He writes, “Our birth names were irrelevant, as were our past acquaintances and past accomplishments and past failures. We were the same now. We were nothing” (89-90). His first few days were filled with rage directed at his mother because he “felt betrayed” (90).

One morning, Moore’s squad leader entered his room and offered him a map to the train station in Wayne because he knew Moore didn’t want to be there. Moore was overwhelmed with gratitude, and his mind spun with plans for a “great escape” (92). He left at midnight that evening and followed the directions perfectly, only to wind up lost in the forest. As he sat on a rock and wept, the entire chain of command found him and took him back to his tactical officer, Colonel Battaglioli, whom Moore calls Batt.

Batt gave Moore one phone call (phone calls were against the rules of the pledge system), and he called his mother. Despite the many promises he made, she would not let him come home because “too many people [had] sacrificed in order for [him] to be there” (95). The call ended with her telling him, “it’s time to stop running” (96).

Moore became impressed with a 19-year-old cadet captain named Ty Hill. It wasn’t the strict rules and routines that had such an impact on Moore but the “different psychological environment, where [his] normal expectations were inverted, where leadership was honored and class clowns were ostracized” (96-97). Unbeknownst to Moore, his mother had asked Captain Hill to keep an eye on him.

Things couldn’t be more different for the other Wes Moore. His story resumes with him catching the bus to Perry Hall High School in West Baltimore. Wes was very popular with girls around town and became involved with one named Alicia. Within two months, Alicia got pregnant. Tony had just had a baby, and so had their mother. When Wes told Tony, he laughed at how absurd the whole situation was. Wes wasn’t necessarily afraid of fatherhood and responsibility, but “he did sense that he was crossing a point of no return, that things were about to get complicated in a way he was unequipped to handle” (100). Tony revealed the news of Alicia’s pregnancy at the firth birthday celebration of their baby brother. Wes began seeing other girls.

One night, Wes saw a girl outside his house who was confronted by a young man named Ray. Ray beat him pretty badly, but not enough to stop Wes from going inside to get his 9 mm Beretta. Wes chased after him. One of Wes’s partners in the drug operation saw the state he was in and joined him. Together they ran after Ray, taking turns shooting at him. Eventually, they heard Ray cry out and saw him fall, so Wes and his friend returned home.

While he was cleaning up in the bathroom, Wes’s mother “was outside the door, knocking ferociously, demanding to know what had happened” (105). Not knowing what else to do, Mary called Tony. Wes hid his gun in the fish tank that housed his snapping turtle. Having disposed of his bloody clothes and put on a clean shirt, Wes held his hands in the air as he was arrested in his bedroom. Wes was already gone by the time Tony arrived.