Bloodsworth by Tim Junkin

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 hungout 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 likea 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