Before I could even finish my prayer, the yellow light disappeared and a bright green one lit up right above it.
"Green light go!"
The soldiers, airmen, Marines, sailors, Coast Guardsmen, cadets, and everyone else in front of me began to shuffle their feet toward the door; it reminded me of commuters leaving a packed subway car, an odd resonance as I approached the open door two thousand feet in the air. We had heard stories during training about people who, after the Black Hat yelled "Green light go," had tried to stay in the plane. They were lifted off their feet by the jumpmasters and thrown out to keep the flow of bodies moving in rhythm and to make sure all of us landed in the drop zone and not in somebody's yard somewhere in Alabama. I shuffled my feet toward the door as the population of the aircraft methodically decreased; my colleagues, I realized, were all now flying through the air beneath me. Suddenly, the only person in front of me was the jumpmaster. He stared at me--we were so close that I could see my distorted reflection in his large Ray-Bans. His cheeks were flapping from the wind blowing against his face. I handed him my yellow rip cord, yelled "Airborne, Jumpmaster!" and turned my body to face the open door. I closed my eyes and felt the air just below me flying by. I assumed the proper position, and somehow my left leg stepped out over the edge of the doorway.
Instantly, my entire body was sucked out of the plane, and I heard--felt--the aircraft speed away. I thrashed around in the wind. It wasn't me who controlled my movements but the rushing air around me. I rotated in darkness because I refused to open my eyes. I was counting in my mind, as I was instructed to, and as I hit the longest three seconds of my life, I felt a sudden jerk, and my body was lifted dozens of feet when my main parachute automatically opened. With that tug, I finally opened my eyes, looked up and, to my relief, saw a perfectly symmetrical and hole-free canopy above me. I felt a cocktail of beautiful emotions coursing through me: peace, love, appreciation. I looked down at the trees waving in the distance, and the gorgeous brown Alabama soil that seemed to be rising to meet me. My equipment was functional, my training was sound, my faith confirmed. I cut through the sky, the wind whipping against my face as I kept my eyes high, staring intently at the horizon.
Cheryl, wake up! What the hell is wrong with you?"
Wes took the face of his third and fourth children's mother in his hands and began to shake her. She lay on the couch, saliva dripping out of the corners of her mouth onto her red Gap T-shirt, her pupils dilated and rolling to the back of her head, heroin still flowing through her veins.
Wes ran to the kitchen and rushed back to her with a glass of water, splashing some on her face and pouring some down her throat until she came to. This was not the first time she had gotten high like this, but it was the first time Wes had seen it.
Wes had met Cheryl years before, while he was still living in Dundee Village. She lived down the street from Alicia in a two-bedroom house with her son. She was older than Wes, already twenty-three when they met, but a relationship developed. His two children with Alicia came back-to-back, born in 1992 and 1993; his children with Cheryl came in the same fashion, born in 1995 and 1996.
"Where did you get this from?" Wes asked, but Cheryl just kept repeating the same response, as if they were the only words she knew: "I'm sorry."
Wes cursed himself. He knew he had been turning a blind eye to telltale signs that things were moving in this direction. Just a month ago, he'd noticed he was missing money and lectured Cheryl: Stop bringing your friends into my house if they're going to be stealing my stuff!
She'd agreed and the conversation had ended, but the problem was not solved. Before that, he'd confronted her after finding a pipe in her closet. "Wes, do you think I would be using while I'm pregnant?" she'd asked. He'd let the matter drop. His love for her and their kids kept him from seeing the truth that now stared him in the face. Cheryl was an addict.
The sight of her coming off her high, stumbling to the bathroom, disgusted Wes. He saw this every day. The people who would line up around the corner for drugs. The people who would do anything to score. He knew these people because he was the one who got them what they needed. It was his job. And it pained him to realize that the mother of his children was just like them. Wes grabbed his keys and walked out the door. He wasn't sure where he was going, but he knew he couldn't stay there.
Wes was tired. Tired of being locked up, tired of watching drugs destroy entire families, entire communities, an entire city. He was tired of being shot at and having to attend the funerals of his friends. He understood that his thoughts contradicted his actions; he had long since accepted that. It was just that his tolerance of his own hypocrisy was wearing thin. He walked down the broken blocks past clusters of abandoned buildings, the glass from shattered windows on the sidewalk, junkies on the steps. He walked for miles through a steady drizzle trying to clear his mind while thirteen-year-olds ran drugs up and down the streets.
Wes turned down Edmondson Avenue, walking toward his friend Levy's house. Levy was a bit younger than Wes but had managed to get out of the hustling game a few months back. At first, Wes had been confused by Levy's decision: why would he give up so much money to go straight? But days like today were making Wes think that maybe Levy was the smart one.
The rain began to subside as Wes approached Levy's house. He walked up the stairs and rang the doorbell.
When Levy saw Wes, his face lit up. "Wes! What's good, yo?" Levy said with his distinctive Baltimore drawl: a trace of a southern twang with words contracted and vowels swallowed. "Come in, come in."
Wes sat on the couch in the middle of the room. His shoulders slumped, his eyes downward. "I'm done, man," he said. "I want to get out. Do something different with my life. But I'm not sure what. I'm not going back to high school. I'm too old for that. But I'm tired of running these streets."
Levy went to the kitchen for a couple of sodas and sat on the couch next to Wes. "Listen, there are definitely some options, but I am telling you, it won't be easy. It will take work, and it will take commitment. Even when the days are tough, you have got to push through. Feel me?"
"Yeah, man, I am ready to try something. Anything."
Levy told Wes about Job Corps, a program he was about to enter. Started in 1964 as a federal initiative, Job Corps was designed to help disadvantaged youth. It was part of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and was modeled after the Depression era's Civilian Conservation Corps. Levy was hoping to become its newest recruit.
Levy would be entering the Job Corps as a high school dropout but was hoping to leave with a general equivalency diploma (GED) and the skills to help him land a job as a hot-water-boiler repairman. He knew the pay would be lower than what he was making on the streets, but the work was steady and honest, and he would have more time to give his family without injury, death, or incarceration looming.
Wes told him he would think about it. Levy found a piece of paper and wrote down a date and an address. "This is where to go if you are serious about the Job Corps. It doesn't take much, just come through. They'll handle all the rest."
Wes had heard about the Job Corps before. His aunt Virginia had started Job Corps but didn't finish. She said it was too much like jail. What Levy was talking about seemed different, but Wes wasn't sure which version to believe.
As he walked away from Levy's house, Wes pondered other reasons to be doubtful about Job Corps. He had two babies' mothers, four kids, and his own mother to take care of. Wes stepped along beneath streetlights and a quarter moon. The day was coming to an end, but he knew it would be a long night.
Wes looked down at his forearm, at the newest addition to the gallery of images inked on his body. A few weeks back, Wes and three of his friends had gone to a tattoo parlor in Baltimore and all gotten the same design permanently inked on their bodies: a black devil's head with horns and sinister eyes. His skin had almost healed, but the pain behind the tattoo was as fresh as ever.
When the three had arrived at the shop, they'd searched f
or a symbol that best represented their allegiance to one another and their shared situations. When he was growing up, Wes would occasionally follow his mother to the New Metropolitan Church on Sunday, but even on his sporadic visits, he never felt any connection. He would watch the singing and dancing, cheering and crying, and chalk it all up to theatrics. Wes would wonder if anyone there even knew who or what they were praying to. Where was God when people didn't make enough money to feed their families? Where was God when kids were selling rocks at twelve years old, and their parents encouraged it because the kids were the main breadwinners in the home? Where was God when a young boy came home from a school that was as uninterested in him as he was in it? Where was God when a kid had a question and looked to his friends in the streets for an answer because his father was locked up and his mother strung out?
Wes remembered leaning back in the black, padded parlor chair and taking a puff on his blunt as the tattoo artist sealed the ink into his skin.
"Fuck God," he said, drawing in a lungful of smoke. "If He does exist, He sure doesn't spend any time in West Baltimore."
After agonizing over it, Wes decided to go with Levy to his final Job Corps interview. While there, Wes sat down with a counselor and began a conversation.
"Do you have a high school degree?"
"No," Wes replied.
"Do you have a record?"
"Yes."
"Are you interested in and serious about this program?"
After receiving the same deployment date as Levy, Wes understood that the only question he was asked that mattered was the last one. When the time came, he packed his bags and said goodbye to his family. Where he was going, he had to go on his own.
Two weeks after his conversation with Levy, Wes stood in a parking lot on the corner of Saratoga and Greene streets, waiting for the bus that would take him to the Woodland Job Corps Center in Laurel. The Sunday evening air seemed unusually still as the baby blue school bus rolled. The bus was packed with a motley group of men and women who represented the spectrum of ages, neighborhoods, backstories, and motivations. But they were united in looking for a new chance. They believed the secret to their second lives hid on the sleepy Howard County, Maryland, campus of Job Corps.
Most everyone on the bus slept during the thirty-minute ride, but Wes sat up, staring out the window, wondering about the next few months. He'd been assured during his interview that he would be allowed to return home every weekend if he chose to, and could make a few calls during the week. He was assured he would be able to bring his music and have time to work on his lyrics. He was told that, if he was willing to put in the work, he would leave the program a different person.
The bus finally entered the Job Corps campus. The dark night appeared even darker as they pushed down a long asphalt road. A tree canopy seemed to collapse over the bus as they slowed to a creep. Wes noticed goalposts to his right and, assuming they indicated a football field, he smiled.
The bus stopped at the welcome center and unloaded. The passengers formed a line, awaiting room assignments. When Wes got to the front of the line, an attractive woman in her mid-thirties stood before him with a clipboard and a smile.
"Welcome to Laurel. What's your last name?" she said.
Wes told her his name and she gave him his room assignment.
He stood there smiling at the girl until she nodded at him, as if to say, "Okay, you got your room, now move on." Wes got the hint, grabbed his bags, and carried them along the concrete walkways curving through manicured lawns that led to his dorm. As he walked, his eyes took in the campus. He noticed a beach volleyball court complete with sand. A full basketball court with regulation lines and nets for the rims sat next to a beautiful wooden gazebo. This was exactly what Wes imagined a college campus would look like. He had never seen anything like it before.
When Wes arrived in his room, he found Levy lying back on the bed, his feet crossed and hands behind his head with his fingers interlocked. Smiling. Wes smiled back at him, relieved to see a living piece of home so far away. The spacious room was far from the prisonlike image his aunt Virginia had painted for him.
"So far, so good," Wes said as he dropped his bags and lay on his bed, imitating Levy's leisurely pose.
In the first phase of Job Corps, students are tested to place them at the right level of GED training. One day after they took the test, the results came back: Levy needed to go through the full monthlong pre-GED training. Wes, by contrast, finished near the top of his class. He completed the course work and received his GED a month later. He was already reading at the level of a sophomore in college.
His quick success had Wes thinking differently about his life. He proudly displayed his new diploma at home, excitedly mounting it one weekend in a frame he'd bought the week he received his test scores. The bus would bring him back to Baltimore City every Friday evening, but much of his weekend was spent preparing for the next week in Laurel. Many of the other students were now looking to Wes for help with their GED prep, for assistance with their personal issues, and for friendship. Just as he had on the corners of Baltimore, Wes became a leader.
After completing his academic course work, Wes started on his professional training. He selected carpentry as his vocational specialty. He had always been handy. Years ago, the siding had begun to fall off his mother's house. His brother, Tony, held the siding level as Wes's steady hand nailed the replacement into place. The crack of the hammer as it connected with the head of the nail. The way the body of the nail disappeared into the siding. The joy of admiring a finished product. The quiet thrill of a job well done.
He enjoyed building but was now motivated to learn true skills. After the mandatory training sessions on the use of the equipment and safety precautions, the teacher told the class he wanted them to create something on their own. The teacher made Wes laugh--he was thin and balding, and full of old jokes--but Wes appreciated his skill and his commitment to this group of young men about whom nobody else seemed to care.
As Wes thought about what he wanted to make, the image of his five-year-old daughter came to him. For much of her life, Wes had been gone. Whether at the Job Corps or behind bars, he had missed many of the milestones in her growing up. The situation at home had become even more tenuous. Cheryl's drug problem had become more consuming and overt. The kids were now basically living with Wes's mom. Cheryl complained but never made a real effort to take the kids back. She knew what everyone around her knew: she was in no position to take care of her own children. Wes had to reconsider what it meant to be a father. He wanted to protect his young daughter, shelter her.
One by one, the students declared what they were going to make. The list of objects blurred together--small pieces of furniture and little decorative items--until it was Wes's turn. He had tuned out the conversation around him to become lost in thoughts about his family. The teacher repeated the question to Wes. All Wes could think about was his daughter. Without a thought about what he was taking on, he announced that he wanted to build her a house. The teacher raised his eyebrows and said, "Interesting. A small house?" Wes looked back at the teacher, but in his mind he was looking at the house he wanted to build: "No, a house big enough for her to get in. A house to protect her."
The other people in the room looked at one another and giggled. But Wes did not flinch.
His teacher smiled. "Great, I look forward to seeing it."
He spent the next seven months building his daughter's house from scratch. He sandpapered every board, hammered every nail, leveled every edge. When it was finished, the house stood five feet high and an arm's length across; it included shutters, a door, and windows. It was by far the most complex project in the group. When it was finished, it sat in the display room along with the projects of his classmates, including wooden plaques and a plain box that someone called a telephone base.
To Wes, the house was more than just a project to complete. It was a daily reminder of why he was there. These past months had been th
e most important and enjoyable in Wes's life. He'd learned skills, gained confidence, and finally felt his life could go in a different direction. He stayed at the Job Corps Center so he could provide a better life for his kids. He stayed for his mother, who sat home watching Tony continue moving in and out of the criminal justice system. He stayed at the Job Corps Center for himself.
After seven months, Wes met his graduation from Job Corps with as much trepidation as excitement. No longer would he have to show up at the large parking lot on Sunday evenings waiting for the blue bus. No longer would he have to share a room with Levy who, after a troubled start, was completing his GED requirements and starting his vocational classes. Wes would now be on his own.
Wes's first job was as a landscaper at a home in Baltimore County. It was a temporary gig, and after five months he moved on to rehabbing homes in the city--another temporary job. After that, he worked as a food preparer at a mall in Baltimore. A year after completing the Job Corps training, Wes realized the only consistency in his employment was inconsistency. That, and the fact that none of these jobs paid over nine dollars an hour.
One day, after completing his shift chopping vegetables, Wes took a detour on the way home. He went by his old West Baltimore neighborhood to pick up a package. He had stayed away from these blocks because he had been so busy since getting back from Laurel. He worked ten hours a day and came home with barely enough energy to play with his kids and barely enough money to feed and clothe them. But the main reason he avoided these streets was that he felt they held nothing for him. He had changed. At least he wanted to believe that, and he continued to tell himself that as he walked through the blocks. He raised his head and acknowledged the many faces he had not seen for over a year.