Brian Keene: Kill Whitey

For this new digital edition of Kill Whitey, my thanks to everyone at Cemetery Dance; Kelli Owen, John Urbancik, Tod Clark, and Mark Sylva; Geoff Cooper, for graciously allowing me to reference the Kwan, and for digging this story since its drunken conception and thinking Kill Whitey was the best title since Fuck Around Quotient Zero; everyone who helped me with Russian (there are too many of you to name here); and my sons.

Although this book takes place in Central Pennsylvania, I have taken certain liberties with the geography. So if you’re looking for your favorite strip club or industrial park, it might not be there anymore—just like in real life.

Her name was Sondra, and when she asked me to kill Whitey, I said yes.

What else could I say? If you could have seen her, if you could have watched the way her pouting, glossy lips formed the words, or if you looked deep into her sad eyes, or heard that sorrow in her sweet, pleading voice—you would have said the same thing.

Yes.

Sondra was beautiful. Her dark hair was so black that sunlight got lost inside it. Her eyes were the same color. Her long fingernails were red, matching her lipstick. She had Russian facial features; a Slavic forehead, chin, nose and cheekbones. She was slim, but had a heart-shaped ass and perfect tits. No boob job for her. No way. Sondra’s breasts were one-hundred percent real. You could tell it by the way they moved when she walked. Or arched her back. Or just breathed.

Damn. That sounds bad, doesn’t it? I hate to make her sound like a piece of meat. She wasn’t. Sondra was much more than that. And I’m not one of those guys, in any case. I respect women. Like the great comedian Sam Kinison used to say—what are you gonna do without women? Give sheep the vote? You’ve got to respect women. And I did. But put that aside for a moment. Sondra was what she was—a surefire cure for erectile dysfunction. She put Viagra to shame. You know those women that you see—the exotic ones that you could never ever get? Not in a million years? She was one of those women. And I got her.

She was the type of woman that men would kill or die just to be with one time. She inspired the imagination. She was who you closed your eyes and fantasized about when you made love to your wife for the five hundredth time. Straight guys wanted to fuck her. Gay guys wanted to be her friend. And women…some women wanted to do both. Well, except for those that instantly hated her—and maybe even some of them wanted to be with her, too.

Sondra was her real name, too. A lot of those girls—especially the Russians—use stage names. But not Sondra. She didn’t have to. Her presence was more powerful than any name she could have taken.

Shit. I’m not a poet. I’m a fucking dockworker. I don’t know how to make it any more palatable for you. I don’t have the words or the ability. What you need to know is this—Sondra was sex, plain and simple. She exuded it. It was in her aura, in her pheromones. It dripped from her pores and followed in her wake like a vapor trail. Sondra was desire and lust, and I wanted her from the moment I saw her.

Was it love? I don’t know. Maybe I thought so for a little while, but even now, after all this time and everything that happened, I just don’t know for sure. I’d been in love before. More than once. I knew what it was like. How it felt. What it did to a man. In the short time I was with Sondra, it certainly felt like that. But it also felt like something more—or maybe, something else .

I don’t know if I loved her, but I was damn sure crazy about her.

And that’s why I said yes when she asked me to kill Whitey.

Saying it, making the promise, was easy. Doing it was harder.

Much harder…

“What’s a Blumpkin?”

We were riding in my Jeep Cherokee. Darryl was up front with me. Yul and Jesse were in the back. It had rained all night, and my tires slid occasionally on the wet pavement, so I drove slowly. Darryl kept giving me shit about it, said I drove like an old lady, but I ignored him and concentrated on the road. It was dark and foggy and my night vision sucked. There were still two hours to go before the sun came up.

My iPod was plugged into the stereo and I had it switched to random play, alternating between Mastodon, Suicide Run, Circle of Fear, Retribution Inc., Nighttime Dealers, and In Flames; heavy music for some heavy conversation.

“What’s a Blumpkin?” Yul asked again. “Seriously.”

I glanced in the rearview mirror. Yul looked confused, but Jesse was grinning.

“A Blumpkin,” Jesse said, “is when a girl gives you a blow job while you’re sitting on the toilet.

Yul made a disgusted face. “Jesus, dude, that’s some sick shit! Who would do something like that?”

Jesse shrugged. “Different strokes for different folks. Know what I’m saying?”

“That’s not a Blumpkin.” I glanced in the rearview mirror again. “That’s a Dirty Sanchez. They were talking about it on Howard Stern the other day.”

“No.” Jesse shook his head. “You’re wrong, Larry. A Dirty Sanchez is when a girl eats out your ass.”

Yul put his hand over his mouth. He looked like he might throw up. Jesse was still grinning. Beside me, Darryl shook his head.

“That’s not a Dirty Sanchez,” he said. “That’s called getting your salad tossed. I saw it on HBO. They did this documentary from prison. Some crazy shit. This inmate was talking about how he liked to get his salad tossed. He put jelly on his asshole first. Then his cellmate licked it out.”

“Jelly?” Jesse laughed. “Who the fuck puts jelly on their salad?”

Darryl turned around. “Motherfuckers in prison, obviously.”

I frowned. “Well if that’s salad tossing, then what the hell’s a Dirty Sanchez?”

“I don’t know,” Darryl admitted. “But I guarantee you it’s something you white motherfuckers invented. Ain’t no brother gonna ask his girl for a ‘Blumpkin’ or a ‘Dirty Sanchez’. We just want to bust a nut. And if we did ask for one, the sisters would kick our ass.”

A tractor-trailer blew past us, spraying water and road grit all over my windshield. I flashed my high beams in annoyance and then turned on the windshield washer to get rid of the grime. It left streaks on the glass.

“Was that one of our guys?” Yul asked, watching the truck’s taillights fade into the distance.

“Yeah,” I said. “I think it was.”

“Asshole,” he muttered.

All of us nodded in agreement. Our drivers were assholes, for the most part. Most of them were two-week trucking school graduates who got their CDL licenses from the bottom of a cereal box—death on eighteen wheels. They drove around hopped up on speed or meth or tremendous amounts of caffeine, and they didn’t give a fuck about the other drivers on the road. Accidents waiting to happen…

There weren’t a lot of jobs in our part of Pennsylvania, so we were grateful for ours. We worked for GPS—Globe Package Service—specifically, at their distribution center in Lewisberry, Pennsylvania. The center served as a hub for all of the mid-Atlantic region, as well as much of the East Coast and southern states. We were only a few hours drive from New York, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Trenton, Richmond and elsewhere. Because of this, our center was always busy. Darryl, Yul, Jesse and me worked the 4am to 8am shift.