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Then I responded, "I guess it’s hard sometimes to distinguish between second chances and last chances."
In the Interlude before Chapter 4, Moore and Wes have a frank discussion about their lives in the prison’s visiting room. Moore makes this observation when Wes remarks on the difficulty of having second chances. For Moore, one of the cruelest realities for so many young urban Black men like Wes and him is that they don’t have a safety net that allows for failure, and thus aren’t given a chance to learn from their mistakes. After growing up in a dangerous, discouraging atmosphere that makes long-term planning seem unnecessary or illogical, Wes and Moore both initially struggle to view themselves and their lives in any context that goes beyond living in the moment. Moore is fortunate enough to have a second chance at Valley Forge, but had he not embraced the opportunity, it could have become a last chance he unwittingly rejected. Wes, meanwhile, eventually becomes frustrated with his prospects after completing Job Corps, which prompts him to return to the streets. At the time, he had no clue that the second chance that Job Corps gave him was the final one he would have before ultimately spending life in prison for murder.
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.
In Chapter 5, Moore reflects on his grandparents’ role in assisting his mother in sending him to Valley Forge, a fact he was not aware of at the time. In explaining his grandparents’ reasoning, he also underscores why opportunity itself can be so fragile and fleeting. In situations like Moore’s, intervention is critical, but it is also an intricate and sensitive matter. His grandparents take a chance when they act on the belief that their intervention is crucial. They are ultimately proven right, but at the time they had no way of knowing that for sure. The fact that this decision is so hard and uncertain for a family that is otherwise upwardly mobile—two educated middle-class professionals who own their own home—suggests how much harder the situation is for families that lack the Thomases’ resources. Despite the two men having similar backgrounds, a stint in military school is never an option for Wes, nor is it a guarantee it would have made all the difference for him either.
The chilling truth is that Wes’s story could have been mine; the tragedy is that my story could have been his.
In the final lines of the epilogue, Moore repeats the conclusion that has haunted him ever since he first heard of Wes. For Moore, their diverging paths are not inherently tied to either of their personal characteristics. Throughout the book, Moore is forthcoming about his own flaws as well as Wes’s better qualities. Moore works hard for his accomplishments, but he also readily admits that he would not have achieved them without the support of others who encouraged him to succeed and gave him the opportunities to do so. For him, the fact that he ended up so successful while Wes ended up in prison is an indictment of a system and culture that ignores young Black men and actively encourages them to fail through neglect. Moore admits that Wes made poor choices and that he is responsible for his own actions, but he also strongly argues in favor of societal changes that provide more people with the same chances, support, and opportunities he himself benefited from.
