Kill Whitey

“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. We called it the night shift, even though it was early morning when we came in. Only four hours of labor, but at sixteen bucks an hour and with no union dues to pay, plus health insurance once you’d passed your ninety-day probationary period, it was just like holding down a full-time job but on part-time hours. Darryl and I worked in Load Area Seven, loading packages into tractor trailers bound for Virginia. Yul was in Sorting Area Two, scanning the bar codes on the package labels and sending them down the correct conveyor belt so that they ended up in the right truck. Jesse worked out in the yard, jockeying trailers from one Load Area to another. Yul’s job was pretty easy, although he had to be quick and accurate and make sure packages went down the right conveyor belt. Otherwise, a box meant for Baltimore could end up in Boston instead. Jesse’s job was a piece of cake. He had lots of down time and plenty of cigarette breaks. You’d often see him hanging around in the break room, drinking coffee and shooting the shit. Darryl and I had the back-breaking positions. If you weren’t in good shape when they assigned you a Load Area, you would be by the end of your first week—or else you’d be dead. I’d been there almost a year, and had lost fifteen pounds. My beer gut turned into abs, and my muscles became hard and lean. No need to join the gym when you did what we did for four hours a day.

That night, we’d only worked half an hour. Started our shift at four in the morning. Twenty minutes later, the power went out through the whole facility. One moment, we’re busting our ass loading boxes into the trucks, and the next, everything got pitch black and quiet. The silence was the weirdest part. No conveyor belts rumbling or rollers squeaking or people shouting orders or forklifts beeping as they raced around. It was actually a little scary, though I’d have never admitted it out loud. These days, you just never know. Life is unnerving. Terrorists or disgruntled nutcases who want to shoot up their workplace lurked around every corner.