Thrust Fault

art by Richard Hanus

by Sharon K. McClain

The front-door frame is supposed to be the strongest in the house, so you squeeze into that rectangle while your siblings spill onto the front porch, vertiginous from tumulted terrain. It’s years before the public safety chant of “Drop, Cover, and Hold On.” Forty-seven miles away, tectonic compression detonates, aggravating a previously unknown fault, forcing mountains six feet upward, buckling roads and freeways. Disfiguring the landscape.

Your stepfather, Bob, roars that this is “The Big One.” Vindication wild in his navy blue eyes. Dark pompadour disheveled. Mom stares vacantly, a sycophant spellbound. Bob’s muscled, 6’5” frame shudders as he preaches that this quake will decimate the metropolitan L.A. area. He’s been forecasting this disaster for years, and since you’ve lived near the ocean most of your twelve years, there is the threat of a tidal wave.

You’ve been through this countless times: L.A. earthquakes and Bob’s raging outbursts. They douse your gut acidic. First, an almost imperceptible rumbling, then a subterranean growl that explodes into foreshocks, threats. Dishes and bric-a-brac clatter then smash from thermodynamics of earth or man. Now a dissonance of blaring car alarms and jarring church bells accompanies the tympanic thud in your chest and the one in the earth.

You know what to do. Jump out of bed. Grab a baby. Find a safe spot.

It seems these tremblers and tantrums always hit in the early morning hours, although there are no supporting statistics. Maybe they stand out because you are most vulnerable when jerked from sleep, fear searing a tender and unsuspecting brain. An amygdala unprepared.

But this quake, and your stepfather’s mood, are different. More intense. You press your spine against the doorjamb as you struggle to balance limbs, while the ground shifts. Your three-year-old brother, Forrest, is in your arms; there’s a long, worn piece of black yarn safety-pinned to the seat of his pajamas since he has decided he is a black Labrador Retriever like your dog, Jardi.

The rent is almost four months past due and Bob is frantic, but there’s the big business deal that’s about to hit pay dirt. He waxes quixotic—“We’ll be rich!”

He swears we’ll be able to pay for all the things: cafeteria lunches; school photos; movie tickets; new clothes to replace the threadbare and ill-fitting; toilet paper instead of newspaper; past-due rent; the phone bill to resume service; toothpaste instead of salt; new shoes for Forrest; the overdue tab at Blaine’s Health Food Store; dog food so Jardi doesn’t have to eat bread; the thousands borrowed from Grandma Pedie Pie for food and lodging over the years; the many unpaid invoice balances at the offices of doctors and dentists in Redondo Beach; extravagant shopping sprees; the mythical powder-blue Cadillac convertible he has talked about for years, in which our family of six will travel in style to Florida to celebrate Christmas; the purchase of a mansion in Beverly Hills. We could finally put roots down instead of enduring several evictions per year. Upheaval. Locally severe damage. Total displacement.

You always believe his promises. Maybe because he believes them too, with a fierceness. A violence. Demanding that you maintain eye contact while he rails against the “shysters” out to get him. While he raves for the lifestyle he so deserves but has not yet manifested. You are afraid to look away lest his fury accelerate, so you start to count quietly, under your breath, riding the rhythm of those digits until the indigo of his eyes spreads like a bruise across his face. Until you coax your mind back into your body.  

The tidal-wave threat is real, Bob announces, so the answer is to head east. To higher ground. To Nevada. Tonight. Without a family car you will climb into the back of Bob’s two-ton metal box truck with your older brother and sister. You’ll sit in flimsy plastic patio chairs on a toxic snowpack, the truck’s flooring covered in inches of slippery white chemicals from Bob’s current business venture. A rusted metal curtain is the only barrier between you and traffic. Bob will drive; Mom and Forrest will ride shotgun.

“We’re not taking Jardi,” Bob says, and you dissolve into numbers, breathing in three-quarter time, two beats in, one beat out. Respiration reeling. Clammy sweat patina stinging the back of your neck.

Aftershocks continue all day, shooting adrenaline through your veins. The TV is flooded with images of buildings collapsed at sickening angles, beams like broken bones, cars crushed under fallen freeways. Occasionally you run across the street with Jardi to monitor the ocean, but there is no supernatural tidal recession that precedes a tsunami.

Why Nevada? You don’t know anyone there. You’ll miss school. And the truck is freezing at night. Plus, you hate how all the drivers point and stare like you’re in a freak show on wheels. Why not a room at the Budget 6 Motel, only a few miles away but at a higher elevation?

You wrap your arms around Jardi, pressing your face into his silky black neck, inhaling that familiar scent of musk, cinnamon toast, and earth. Maybe you could sneak him into the motel.

Years later you read there was no tsunami threat because this quake’s epicenter occurred inland with no ocean floor displacement.

You hope Bob forgets about Nevada. But by 6 p.m. he orders you to pack for the trip. By 8 p.m. the smog-stained moon rises red, interpreted by Bob as the omen to exit California. A familiar dread swells under your sternum, shunts blood to thighs, spreads pupils like inkblots.

In the bedroom you share with Forrest, you frantically shove flannel pajamas, red Keds tennis shoes, a handful of underpants into a worn duffel bag. With no knowledge of how long you’ll be gone, you guess at what to pack. You cram a Joni Mitchell album into the bag. You stuff your favorite peach lip gloss into the side zip pocket.

You enter the dark living room, Bob’s limp body submerged in the couch cushions, hushed talk-show voices drifting out of the glowing TV. Mom putters in the kitchen.

“The truck’s leaking oil,” Bob’s words thick like sludge. His back towards you, he burrows deeper into the couch and drifts off.

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