The Trees of Ketron Island
New fiction by Kyle Seibel for day one of Little Blanksgiving
It’s day one of Little Blanksgiving, our week of fiction, poetry, and essays co-published with Blank, a Dirtyverse newsletter about books and the culture around them. We start with Kyle Seibel’s latest story below. You might recognize the setting, but it’s from a different angle.
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THE TREES OF KETRON ISLAND
by Kyle Seibel
Paul dries his hands on the front of his shirt and goes outside to see his son climbing out of a dusty sedan. The car has no license plate and a panel near the bumper is missing and there are patches of corrosion along the wheel well.
The neck of Junior’s t-shirt is stretched out and Paul can see the bony line of his son’s clavicle through the eaten and thin material. Paul asks where he got the car and Junior smiles. His teeth are practically green.
“Borrowed it.”
“They know you borrowed it?”
“Not yet,” Junior says, flashing his green teeth again.
“No phone huh?” Paul says.
“That’s right.”
“Ferry’s still out.” Paul squints into the distance. “Weeks now.”
“Took the Warren bridge, Dad. Up and over.”
Paul pulls off his ballcap and works the bill into a more aggressive arc. “You eat?” he says, but a plane roars overhead and swallows his words.
After the engine noise dissipates, Junior says, “What was that one?”
“Growler. From Whidbey, probably.”
“That the kind you flew?”
“Nope.”
Junior steps forward. “So Dad, you know how I’ve always been really intrigued by fine dining? Like the business side? Well, at TCC they’re doing these—”
Paul puts his hand up and looks at the sky. “Hang on, I think there’s another one coming. There’s usually a couple.”
They stand in silence, waiting. When nothing happens, Paul walks over to the blackberries that grow wild along the driveway. He wipes off some spider webs and inspects a cluster. The berries are rotted and half-gnawed. “The rabbits this year. Size of labradors.”
“Hey Dad—”
“Hang on a second, PJ. Help me get some netting from the shed. Been meaning to do this.”
“Well, I can’t really stick around too long, is the thing. I was just hoping to, you know.”
Paul scores his throat and spits in the gravel. “You are killing me, boy. Every time you come here.”
“Dad—”
“Damn these rabbits,” Paul whispers, whipping his hat off and wringing the bill again. “Goddamn them.”
Flying low overhead, a commercial propeller plane barely clears the treeline and zips above them.
“Holy shit,” Junior says, ducking. “That happen a lot?”
Paul blinks. “No…”
They go to the road and scan the skies. In the distance, they see a slim passenger plane climb high into the air and dive steeply toward the ground. Both father and son watch the plane do this over and over, the aircraft coming close enough once to send them scattering into the yard.
The plane changes heading and through the trees, they catch glimpses of it circling somewhere over the Narrows. Then the plane changes heading again and they lose sight of it completely.
Paul slaps Junior’s chest. “Bet we can see it on the roof.”
And they can. From the roof, they can see the whole sound. Paul straddling the spine. Junior sitting on the low pitch, hugging his knees. They watch the plane climb so high it inverts and then dives down, pulling up right before hitting the water.
“Fuckin a,” Junior breathes. “He did a backflip.”
“A barrel roll,” Paul says.
Later that night, Paul will watch a TV news story about the plane. He will learn about Richard Russell, a baggage handler who, on a whim, hijacked a passenger aircraft for over an hour, maintaining cordial and self-aware dialogue with the controllers in the tower and the pilots of the jets they scrambled to escort him. He admitted to having some mental problems, but never knew how severe until now. The other pilots tried to get him to find a place where he could land safely, but in the end, Richard Russell chose to die by crashing the plane into the trees of Ketron Island.
On the roof, Paul and Paul Junior watch it happen. That final dive. No attempt to pull up. Then the fireball.
It is almost full dark. Paul removes his hat and works the visor curve with his hands. He looks at his son, who is also crying. Balancing on the roof, they clutch at each other awkwardly, a hug of sorts, and Paul feels sharp shoulder bones and smells sour hair.
Even for Pierce County, Ketron Island is remote, and as a result, the crash site burns for hours. A long finger of ash points straight to heaven. It is still smoking when Paul Junior leaves, spraying gravel into the grass, the black daemon within him throbbing with hunger, nosing the pocket that holds what the father promised will be the last time.
Kyle Seibel lives in Santa Barbara. His debut collection Hey You Assholes is out now from Clash Books.
Cross off the readers on your holiday gift list with 25% OFF EVERYTHING IN THE LITTLE ENGINES SHOP WITH CODE BLANKSGIVING. Grab copies of ARCHIVE, recent issues of the print magazine, plus hats and t-shirts. Shipping is free in the US: littleengines.shop.
Beautiful work