Bloodsworth Read online

  For Christmas, Curtis always gave Kirk muskrat traps. From January to March Kirk would get up every morning at four thirty, ride his bicycle out to the marsh to where he’d laid his traps, harvest his muskrats, reset his traps, and ride home. He used Connabear traps, named for Fred Connabear, the mountain man, and would mark their locations with red flags tied to gum poles cut from the gum thickets. The black pelts sold for ten dollars apiece back in the 1970s, and the browns would fetch seven or eight. Riding home on his bicycle, he looked like a miniature woolly mammoth, the musk-rats hanging all over him on strings. Several years running, Kirk won the Dorchester County junior trap-setting contest at the outdoor show. He won the oyster-shucking contest a couple of times, too.

  When the weather turned warm, Kirk and his friends would start fishing, crabbing, and frog-gigging. Kirk fished with a gum pole for a rod and half a spark plug for a sinker, and despite his primitive gear, as his father tells it, “He could really smoke ‘em.” He’d often come home with stringers of perch so long that he wasn’t tall enough to lift them off the ground, and they’d drag behind him. His grandma, Miss Vinnie B., was very fond of the perch roe, and when Kirk was fishing there was always plenty of roe for breakfast. Kirk used a four-prong spear on the nights he went bullfrogging in the marsh, and sometimes would fill several gander sacks full with the frogs. Pritchett’s General Store bought all the frogs he could catch. It bought his muskrat pelts too. Pritchett’s was real country in the country with creaky, old wooden floors, and selling turtle meat and cow’s tongue, tripe and marinated duck eggs. After being paid, Kirk liked to sit on the rocker out front, sip a cool lemon freeze, and talk to the customers. He never thought about it much because it was all he knew. But the open country, the wind on the water, the changing landscapes of the marsh—this natural beauty and freedom was stamped inside him and was what he cherished.

  The Bloodsworths lived on Atlantic Avenue in the town of Cambridge, Maryland. Kirk was eight when, as he remembers it, Rap Brown and the Black Panthers blew the corner of the courthouse right off its foundation and set half the town on fire. His aunt lived across the street from the courthouse, and the explosion knocked the windows in her house out. The Cambridge riots of ‘68 put the town on the map for a while, brought to light the injustice of inchoate segregation and the poverty of country existence. Kirk’s mother, Jeanette, was one of the few who stood up for their local black friends at the time. She was an angelic woman, a devout Christian, who always had a smile and was ready to play. She ran a clean, scrubbed house, though, and allowed no nonsense when it came to chores, manners, or religion. When things got tight she’d help out at Netty Brown’s, the local beauty parlor, but mostly she kept the house and looked after Kirk and his older sister, Vickie. Jeanette insisted that the fire was the work of a few bad apples who’d come to stir up trouble, and that none of the townsfolk she knew could be involved. “It’s what a man’s heart says,” she’d drum in to Kirk. “That’s all that counts. It doesn’t matter what the color of the skin is. And you must stand up for this in life. Stand up for your principles.” Kirk believed what she told him. Later, when he was in prison, these teachings probably saved him.

  After middle school, Kirk attended Cambridge High for a while, then transferred to the Open Bible Academy, a small, church-run vocational program. He had a girlfriend named Cathy Wheatley and occasionally they talked about getting married, but Kirk knew he wasn’t ready. At around age sixteen he started drinking beer, and he first smoked marijuana when he was seventeen. Kirk’s mother hoped the Christian school would keep him on the straight path. But pot was prevalent in Cambridge in the late 1970s, and it seemed that at every party he attended, it was there for the taking. It was at the Open Bible Academy, though, that Kirk first started throwing the discus.

  He had always been naturally strong and developed an interest in strength as he grew up. He’d played softball in junior high but was clumsy and not well coordinated. But even as a boy, he’d been muscular. Before his head reached above the tailgate of his father’s refrigerator truck, Kirk was heaving hundred-pound crates of seafood and ice up into the truck bed. He enjoyed anything requiring strength and read the biography of Paul Anderson, the world’s strongest man. By age fourteen, Kirk could dead-lift five hundred pounds. At the Open Bible Academy he met Richard Drescher, who’d been a Pan American Games discus champion in 1971. Drescher taught him the techniques of throwing the discus, and Kirk couldn’t get enough. He practiced in his yard at home, and according to his father, “Kirk busted many a shingle off the house and broke quite a few windows. He’d try to throw from the front driveway to the backyard and sometimes his aim was just off.” But the practice paid off. Kirk won the national championship for Christian schools and then won the state championship in Elkridge, Maryland, by more than thirty feet.

  Kirk, admittedly, wasn’t much of a student. He did manage to graduate, but since the Open Bible Academy wasn’t accredited, he didn’t receive a diploma. This didn’t matter much at the time because by then he’d made plans to join the Marine Corps. Curtis had been a marine, and Kirk got the notion in his head that he could throw the discus for the marines. He graduated from high school in the summer of 1977, signed up for a four-year tour, and headed off to Parris Island for his basic training.

  KIRK FELT RIGHT at home at Parris Island, which sits in the flat marsh country of South Carolina. He was strong and in decent-enough shape. He didn’t much care for the screaming and hazing, but the physical conditioning didn’t faze him. From Paris Island, he shipped out to Camp Pendleton in California for two months of infantry training. He’d never been at any elevation above sea level and didn’t take well to humping the mountains, but he adjusted. He began inquiring about the Marine Corps track team, but none of his superiors seemed to take seriously his aspirations to become a corps discus thrower. To them, he was just one more grunt with unrealistic expectations and looking for an easier ride.

  Kirk graduated from infantry school and was assigned to a marine base in Riota, Spain. There he renewed his requests for an opportunity to try out for the Marine Corps track team, but again his requests were ignored. The marine base there was commanded by a Major Howell, a man insulated from his men, who didn’t deign to give Kirk an answer. Even so, Kirk took great pride in being a marine. He particularly excelled at inspections. He practiced perfecting his uniform, made up his bunk with razor-blade creases, polished his dress shoes until they reflected his face like a mirror. He developed his own technique for cleaning his rifle, one he’d learned hunting coon and deer back home. Most of the marines tried using brass or silver polish to make their weapon look clean. Kirk used polish first. But then he finished by using the back side of the foil from a Juicy Fruit chewing gum wrapper to put a silver shine on every part of his rifle—the barrel, breach, trigger, even inside the muzzle. One afternoon during an inspection, a visiting major general walked alongside Major Howell. When the major general got to Kirk, he stopped, impressed with his bearing and uniform. Kirk’s shoes were impeccably shined. His buttons sparkled in the sunlight. When the major general looked at his rifle, he did a double-take. He took the burnished steel weapon and examined it everywhere. He showed it to Howell, then to other marines in the inspection line as an example of perfection. He then returned it to Kirk, complimenting him before moving down the line of men. Once inside the bunkhouse, the major general asked to see Kirk’s bed. It looked right out of a marine manual, without a wrinkle. The major general began asking Kirk questions about marine SOPs—standard operating procedures. Kirk knew all the answers. The major general gave Kirk three outstanding inspection citations. Each one entitled Kirk to a ninety-six-hour pass. Kirk asked the major general if instead of the passes, he could have something else. He wanted to make an alternative request. He asked if the senior officer would consider it. The major general looked at Major Howell, then said he’d listen.

  Kirk told the major general of his dream of trying out for the Marine Corps track
team as a discus thrower. At the time, in order to qualify for a tryout, a marine had to beat every man on the base. Kirk told him he could do this. The officer studied Kirk for a moment, surveying him from head to foot. He asked Kirk if really he was any good. Kirk replied that he’d had an Olympic coach in high school who thought he was really good, that there were some people back in his home state who thought he was really good cause he’d beaten them all, and that if the major general didn’t believe him and wanted proof, he’d prove it to him. The major general chuckled at this brashness. He then asked Kirk how far he’d have to throw it to qualify. Kirk answered 150 feet. The man said, “Well, can you throw it that far?” Kirk answered, “Sure, I can throw it that far.”

  The major general turned to Major Howell, winked, then ordered someone to get a discus. He had an orderly mark off 150 feet. He told Kirk to go over to the mark and throw the discus back toward them. When Kirk got there, he shouted over, “Well, I’m sort of in a bad way, sir, ‘cause here I got my dress shoes on.” The major general shouted back, “You said you can throw it 150 feet. If you can, you can damn well do it in your Sunday finest.”

  Winding his body in a coil around the discus, Kirk then did a 360-degree rotation and unleashed it. It sailed over the head of the two majors, over the storage shed behind them, and landed maybe 175 feet from where Kirk was standing. The major general laughed out loud, had the discus retrieved, and hollered for Kirk to do it again. Kirk repeated the performance, throwing it even farther. The major general, without even conferring with Major Howell, then said, “Marine, go pack your shit. You’re going out on the next transport with me. Tryouts are in Quantico, Virginia, and that’s where you’re headed.”

  Kirk not only made the marine track team three years in a row, but became the All-Marine Discus Champion for each of those three years. He’d spend four months stateside each year training and competing, and the rest of the time he’d be back in Spain, with relatively easy duty, often with too much time on his hands. He chased girls and first smoked hashish when in Spain, and drugs became an easy way to relieve the boredom. While on the base, he spent much of his time training and coaching other discus throwers and shot-putters. In the national tournaments in which he competed, though, he never was able to throw his best and his career as a discus thrower faltered. He served for a while as a base security guard. Gradually he grew impatient with the restricted life of the military, the repetitive days, the monotony. He longed to be back on the river, free, working the water. When his tour finally ended, on October 16, 1981, he received an honorable discharge from the marines, made his way back to Baltimore, and boarded a Greyhound bus headed home to Cambridge.

  Bill Elliot, a crab-potter off Hudson Point on the Little Choptank River, gave Kirk a job that fall. When crabbing season ended Kirk tried oyster tonging, but the oysters were scarce. Kirk had spent everything he’d made while in the marines, so he needed work. He picked up different odd jobs trying to get by, hoping to save enough money to buy his own workboat. Some months he helped his father loading seafood; others he worked jogging papers for the Easton Star Democrat. He also worked for one of the town morticians, Raymond Curran, of Curran’s Funeral Home. Kirk had seen another boy fall into a crab scrape once and drown, and when he was pulled up he was all mangled and in terrible shape. At his funeral, though, he looked decent. Kirk developed a respect for mortuary science. When not crab potting or helping his father load the seafood truck, he worked on and off for Curran over the next couple of years, assisting him at the funeral home.

  After coming home, Kirk let his hair grow out again. It was fiery red and curly, though with weeks in the sun it tended to bleach to a ginger blond. He grew a mustache and thick mutton-chop sideburns. He stood just under six feet tall and was anything but thin. Burly, barrel-chested, and still very strong, he weighed about 212 pounds. Perhaps as a reaction to the cooped-up life of the military, Kirk went a bit haywire in Cambridge, smoking pot, drinking too much, chasing girls. Raymond Curran, fed up with Kirk’s sporadic attendance and sloppy work, eventually let him go.

  In early 1984, just after Valentine’s Day, Kirk took a road trip to Baltimore with a friend to carouse at a hardhead nightclub called Hammerjacks. From there the two friends ended up at a bar in Essex called Skip’s Tavern. It was at Skip’s Tavern that Kirk ran into Wanda Gardenier, “rough and ready,” as he described her. They danced together, went outside to smoke a joint, danced again, and found they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Kirk spent the night with her and to hear him tell it, he was just a goner, hook, line, and sinker.

  Wanda was ten years older than Kirk, more experienced, and their lovemaking was unlike anything he’d ever known. She hung out with a tough crowd—bikers and gang members from the Outlaws. She had hair down to her waist, liked to lounge around in bars and drink, smoke reefer, and party. She had two kids from a previous marriage who stayed with their father in Pennsylvania. Wanda lived in Baltimore, and what she did mostly was play. What magic she had, she worked on Kirk, because he couldn’t say no to anything she asked. Kirk’s parents disliked her at first and then came to despise her. They begged Kirk to break away. But on April 14, 1984, two months after he met her, they married at the Christian Tabernacle Church in Middle River, Baltimore. Kirk’s parents were so upset that neither attended the wedding. Curtis showed up briefly at the reception and gave Kirk $200 as a wedding gift. Kirk and Wanda used the cash for their honeymoon in Ocean City over the weekend, where they mostly stayed drunk. While trying to get a cork out of a champagne bottle, Kirk broke off his front tooth. They laughed at this, as Wanda had a broken front tooth as well. They were alike now. They tried to settle down in Cambridge, living at Miss Libby’s Boarding House on Henry Street. But Wanda was neither a small-town girl nor the domestic type. Things quickly turned bad, then went from bad to worse.

  As Kirk recalls it, Wanda wouldn’t work and wouldn’t stay home. She was constantly high and wanting to party. She was never home when he got off work, and he’d have to search the bars to find her. She’d disappear for days at a time. They fought often. Kirk tried to get her to look for a job, but as he remembers her, “Wanda wouldn’t work in a pie shop sampling the pies.”

  In early June, Kirk was working with Bill Elliot, getting the crab pots ready to set, when he got a call from the emergency room at Dorchester Hospital. Wanda, who didn’t have a driver’s license, had taken his car keys off his dresser, driven out to Big Boys Bar, stoked herself up on about fifteen Jack and Cokes in the middle of the afternoon, and wrecked his car. She’d broken her nose and looked like a raccoon when he saw her. They had no medical insurance and Kirk had no auto insurance. His car was wrecked and he had to borrow money from his father to pay the hospital bill and then hire a lawyer to defend his wife in court. He was fed up.

  With the assistance of the lawyer Kirk hired, Wanda got a thirty-day suspended sentence for driving under the influence of alcohol and was put on a year’s probation with the requirement that she attend alcohol counseling. A few days later, Kirk got a call from the sheriff’s office that she hadn’t shown up for her initial meeting with her probation officer. She’d been missing for two days. Kirk borrowed a motorcycle and rode down to Ocean City where he found her in the Purple Moose Saloon, barefoot, drunk, dirty, and crying. He drove her back on the bike. He felt his heart was going to break, but it was obvious she just couldn’t stand living in Cambridge. Kirk gave her all the money he had at the time, about twenty dollars, and put her on a bus to go back to her mother’s house in Baltimore.

  But Kirk couldn’t stay away. Despite everything she was and had done, he longed for her and couldn’t stop. His insides were all twisted up and his mind confused. He thought of her constantly. The Friday of July 4 weekend he telephoned Wanda’s mother, Birdie Plutschak, and found out where Wanda was staying. Then Kirk called Wanda and told her he was coming. He’d find some kind of work in Baltimore. He just wanted to be with her. She said, “Okay,” like it was no big dea
l. He hitchhiked up there with a ten and change in his pocket and just the clothes on his back.

  Wanda had moved into a two-bedroom row house at 30 South Randolph Road in Essex with her half sister, Dawn Gerald. Others were living there as well. When Kirk arrived, he found in addition to Wanda and Dawn, Wanda’s two brothers, Joey and Kirk Martin; and Tammy Albin, a club dancer up in the city. Dawn and Tammy brought home boyfriends, bikers mostly, and Joey and Kirk Martin were always trying to hustle girls in there. The place was a constant party.

  Kirk found a job working for a woman named Donna Hollywood, loading wicker furniture at a nearby outlet called Harbor to Harbor, about a mile away. He worked four days each week and, with no car, walked to and from work. In fact, he walked everywhere. He and Tammy were the only two in the group house that were employed, though Tammy worked nights.

  Whenever Kirk was in the house, it seemed like a circus—filled with nonstop hard rock, spilled beer, marijuana smoke, toked-up bikers, wired-up chippies partying all night, fights, sex. Dawn Gerald and her half brother, Joey Martin, slept in the same bed. Kirk and Wanda lived out of cardboard boxes. They were given a pullout couch in the living room to sleep on, but it was seldom quiet enough to sleep and they had no privacy. Everyone was ramped up. Kirk was constantly borrowing money from people in the apartment who were constantly fighting over money. And Wanda acted no differently than she had in Cambridge. If anything, her conduct made Kirk feel even worse, as it took place in front of so many people. She’d disappear with biker friends and binge through the night. Kirk would come home from work having bought groceries for supper, and she wouldn’t show up till near dawn. He was sleep deprived, always broke, jealous, and heart-shattered.