Fault Line (2 page)
Authors: Sarah Andrews
About then, certain possibilities began to hit me. Geology had just happened in a big way, and right under my feet.
Perhaps, in the aftermath of this event, there will be work for me! Maybe the Utah Geological Survey will need me part-time, even, so I can keep going to school. Enough of this job-hunt merry-go-round! Ifâno, whenâI find work, I can even tell Tom Latimer to take a hike with this training he's putting me through.
This thought in particular appealed to me. Tom and I had been getting together on the odd evening and weekend. He was training me to be a detective, or operative, or whatever he liked to call himself. He was teaching me how to detect things formally, through the old-fashioned routes, and without risking my foolish neck. But I was beginning to think that low risk meant life in a laboratory, looking at bags of dirt shipped in from the remote places I'd prefer to be, and old-fashioned seemed to mean the same thing as tedious. I'd begun to tire of the whole idea. “Give me a good field job in geology,” I'd told him. “Out there by myself. Working out geological puzzles, not human ones. That will keep me out of trouble.” For the first time that day, Tom had laughed.
Perhaps, in the aftermath of this event, there will be work for me! Maybe the Utah Geological Survey will need me part-time, even, so I can keep going to school. Enough of this job-hunt merry-go-round! Ifâno, whenâI find work, I can even tell Tom Latimer to take a hike with this training he's putting me through.
This thought in particular appealed to me. Tom and I had been getting together on the odd evening and weekend. He was training me to be a detective, or operative, or whatever he liked to call himself. He was teaching me how to detect things formally, through the old-fashioned routes, and without risking my foolish neck. But I was beginning to think that low risk meant life in a laboratory, looking at bags of dirt shipped in from the remote places I'd prefer to be, and old-fashioned seemed to mean the same thing as tedious. I'd begun to tire of the whole idea. “Give me a good field job in geology,” I'd told him. “Out there by myself. Working out geological puzzles, not human ones. That will keep me out of trouble.” For the first time that day, Tom had laughed.
Laugh while you can, cloak-and dagger boy,
I told him now in the privacy of my own head,
because the earth has moved, and I am going to do some geology!
I grabbed my jeans, some wool socks, and a pair of bootsâmy favorite old pair of red ropers, for luckâand wiggled into them.
Did the rupture come to surface?
I wondered.
Will I be able to see the scarp? No, it wasn't that big. Well, maybe some chimneys have fallen, or maybe there's even a house off its foundations!
I told him now in the privacy of my own head,
because the earth has moved, and I am going to do some geology!
I grabbed my jeans, some wool socks, and a pair of bootsâmy favorite old pair of red ropers, for luckâand wiggled into them.
Did the rupture come to surface?
I wondered.
Will I be able to see the scarp? No, it wasn't that big. Well, maybe some chimneys have fallen, or maybe there's even a house off its foundations!
I stopped, my right boot halfway on my foot, chagrined at what I'd been thinking. I was a student of the Earth, but Faye had been right: My excitement was everybody else's tragedy. I began to wonder about the damage in a different way. Wondered if anyone had been hurt. Wondered if any cornices had fallen on people's heads. These thoughts kept me frozen for several seconds.
Well then, I'll just go out and see if I can help,
I told myself. I pulled my boot the rest of the way onto my foot, slipped into my down parka, checked its right-hand pocket for my keys, and hurried out the door.
I told myself. I pulled my boot the rest of the way onto my foot, slipped into my down parka, checked its right-hand pocket for my keys, and hurried out the door.
I was in a liquor store in Santa Cruz. Glass started raining off the shelves. I made it out the door and did some Tai Chi break-dancing in the parking lot. When it was over, I turned around and looked back inside the shop. The place was shin-deep in broken glass.
âA young man, describing the 1989 magnitude 7.1 Loma Prieta earthquake as he experienced it in Santa Cruz, California, a lovely coastal university town founded in the 1800s by retired sea captains. Many of the fine old commercial buildings downtown were constructed of unreinforced brick. As buildings collapsed, there were fatalities. Many businesses, while nominally insured, could not afford to rebuild, and so went out of business, permanently changing the prized character of the central business area.
I WAS HALFWAY DOWN THE STAIRS WHEN I REALIZED THAT underneath my jacket I was wearing only my flannel nightshirt. This fact suggested to me that I was a little more jangled by the earthquake than I had previously been aware. I ran back upstairs, rigged myself up with proper long-john shirt, turtleneck, and sweater, once again donned the down parka, grabbed a wool cap, and tried again.
Down on the lawn, Greta, Julia, and Mrs. Pierce were still staring at the house as if it had grown fangs, though their way of expressing their thoughts and feelings had subsided from screams to a gentle sobbing. They were still huddled together
under Mrs. Pierce's quilts. “Are you frightened, dear?” Mrs. Pierce asked, her beetle-bright eyes measuring me for damage.
under Mrs. Pierce's quilts. “Are you frightened, dear?” Mrs. Pierce asked, her beetle-bright eyes measuring me for damage.
A thick fog was visiting the predawn darkness. The chill, damp air bit into my nostrils and swirled over the street, evoking a movie set for the remaking of
The Hound of the Baskervilles.
I exhaled. “I'm fine, thank you, Mrs. Pierce. I'm just going for a little drive.”
The Hound of the Baskervilles.
I exhaled. “I'm fine, thank you, Mrs. Pierce. I'm just going for a little drive.”
Mrs. Pierce gave me a look that suggested that she thought that I, too, had just sprouted fangs. I briefly considered trying to explain the workings of my mind, but, having struck out with as close a friend as Faye, I decided to save my breath.
The old woman's eyes narrowed from anxiety to distrust. She said, “You're a geologist, hmm? So you know a little more about this than some folks. I see you're taking off here. Is there something you're not telling me?”
I thought,
What's this? You think I'd just run for it without passing you a warning?
but my training kicked in again and immediately started spewing scientist hem and haw talk, full of qualifications. I said, “Well, first, earthquakes aren't my specialty, so I really don't know that much more than you do. But I think the first shock is usually the largest. Although there is no way to predict what will happen next.”
What's this? You think I'd just run for it without passing you a warning?
but my training kicked in again and immediately started spewing scientist hem and haw talk, full of qualifications. I said, “Well, first, earthquakes aren't my specialty, so I really don't know that much more than you do. But I think the first shock is usually the largest. Although there is no way to predict what will happen next.”
Mrs. Pierce's eyes narrowed down to slits. She was not enjoying this taste of the kind of sidestepping geologists get mired in when they're trying to answer such questions.
It was not the moment to try to explain the limits on predictability and the slipperiness of nonquantitative confidence intervals to my landlady. I threw scientific caution to the winds and said, “If I had to guess, I'd say that was as big as it's going to get, but there will probably be several littler ones over the next few hours. And in that time, you're infinitely more likely to die of exposure if you don't go back inside than from falling masonry if you do.” I was unable to say this without looking somewhat apprehensive. My apartment was in Mrs. Pierce's big old two-story
unreinforced brick house on Douglas Street, up near the University of Utah, within a block of the line where the ground suddenly steepens as it ascends the buried scarp of the Wasatch fault. You'd think a geologist would live somewhere other than smack-dab on top of a fault, but hey, it's cheap housing, and while house hunting, I'd used the same brand of denial that seems to work for everyone else: I'd told myself it wouldn't happen while I was living there.
unreinforced brick house on Douglas Street, up near the University of Utah, within a block of the line where the ground suddenly steepens as it ascends the buried scarp of the Wasatch fault. You'd think a geologist would live somewhere other than smack-dab on top of a fault, but hey, it's cheap housing, and while house hunting, I'd used the same brand of denial that seems to work for everyone else: I'd told myself it wouldn't happen while I was living there.
I stood a respectful distance back from the facade, inspecting it as best I knew how. I couldn't see any new cracks in the ancient mortar. The chimney was still standing. All was quiet. But was there something obvious I had missed?
A moment later, I heard a siren, far in the distance. Somewhere in the back of my brain, it rang like a call to action. I scanned the wall again, my mind reaching into it, Em Hansen waking up once again in the skin and skull of the geologist. Giving Mrs. Pierce a pat on the shoulder, I said, “Go back inside and keep warm. But don't sit next to a bookshelf, or under that chandelier you have in your dining room. Turn on the TV, get some early news; they'll have interviewed some seismologists by now, and they'll have an advisory for you. I'll go scout the area and let you know what I find out.”
I got into my truck and drove through the predawn city, marveling at how many lights were on, but as far as I could see, each house appeared to be still firmly mounted on its foundation. After a five-minute tour of the avenues, I had spotted only one fallen chimney, and for all I knew, it had been sent to its doom by the freezing and thawing cycles of Salt Lake City's temperate winter weather, not by the renegade shifting of the Earth's crust.
Or by a combination of factors,
I reasoned. I had read that earthquakes could be as quixotic as tornadoes when it came to the damage they did; one house might be leveled, while the one across the street could suffer only a few broken dishes. It was all a matter of the quality of construction and the angles at which
shock waves struck solid and not-so-solid objects. Like the 1989 Loma Prieta quake out in California: Structures close to that Richter 7.1 event were snapped off their foundations unless bolted down. The farther away a building was from the epicenter, the less damage was done, until the shock waves reached the forty-miles-distant- cities of Oakland and San Francisco. There, a bridge fell, and elevated highways built below current codes collapsed.
Or by a combination of factors,
I reasoned. I had read that earthquakes could be as quixotic as tornadoes when it came to the damage they did; one house might be leveled, while the one across the street could suffer only a few broken dishes. It was all a matter of the quality of construction and the angles at which
shock waves struck solid and not-so-solid objects. Like the 1989 Loma Prieta quake out in California: Structures close to that Richter 7.1 event were snapped off their foundations unless bolted down. The farther away a building was from the epicenter, the less damage was done, until the shock waves reached the forty-miles-distant- cities of Oakland and San Francisco. There, a bridge fell, and elevated highways built below current codes collapsed.
But that was a really big quake,
I reminded myself.
This one here is really only moderate, and the amount of energy released as the Richter scale numbers get larger is logarithmic. Loma Prieta was probably a thousand times larger.
I reminded myself.
This one here is really only moderate, and the amount of energy released as the Richter scale numbers get larger is logarithmic. Loma Prieta was probably a thousand times larger.
I decided to go back to my apartment and get some breakfast, then head up to the University of Utah to dig into some textbooks on seismicity and structural geology.
Go on home,
I told myself.
Emergency over.
Go on home,
I told myself.
Emergency over.
But then I saw another pile of brick that had once been a chimney, and another, and then an ambulance hurrying north toward Holy Cross Hospital, and I wanted to be with friends. I remembered that Faye had asked me to come to her house. I decided to go there and, like Mrs. Pierce, watch the news.
Faye's house lay to the south and uphill. It was a big thing on a choice bit of real estate, set up above the city on a topographic bench carved by waves that had rolled ashore eleven thousand years ago, when Great Salt Lake filled the whole desert like a chamber pot. Being a pilot, Faye liked altitude and long views, and, being a trust-fund baby, she could afford to pay for them. Sadly, my ancient truck did not and could not. It conked out about four blocks short of her house, declaring its intentions by belching up a cloud of stinking smoke with a horrible grinding noise.
I climbed out, slammed the door, and jumped up and down on the empty street in frustration, which is not something I recommend if you're still getting back in shape after wobbling around in a walking cast for four months. A nasty jolt went
up the still-healing muscles of that leg. But I wasn't worrying about bones and flesh just then. That truck and I had gone a lot of lonely miles together, and this time, I could not afford to fix it. I was, as was not unusual, a touch underemployed. I had enough money squirreled away to pay my rent and feed myself for about four more months, but another round of automotive repairs would sink me. I closed my eyes, threw back my head, and whispered, “Why me?”
up the still-healing muscles of that leg. But I wasn't worrying about bones and flesh just then. That truck and I had gone a lot of lonely miles together, and this time, I could not afford to fix it. I was, as was not unusual, a touch underemployed. I had enough money squirreled away to pay my rent and feed myself for about four more months, but another round of automotive repairs would sink me. I closed my eyes, threw back my head, and whispered, “Why me?”
The cold air kissed my face. Not getting an answer and not expecting one, I heaved a deep sigh, turned my back on the truck, and trudged the rest of the way up the hill to Faye's house. As my leg now felt like I'd been hitting it with sledgehammers, I took the shortest route, which cut straight through a few acres of other people's landscaping. The most recent snow had melted sufficiently so I left no obvious footprints, I awoke only one dog, and I had to climb only one fence, so by the time I got to Faye's, I felt once again almost in control of my destiny.
I found my way to Faye's back door and knocked loudly. Abruptly, the light that had been burning in the bedroom wing winked out. I knocked again. Nothing.
Perhaps half a minute later, I became aware that a volume of space beyond the window to my right had grown slightly paler.
“It's just me, Tom,” I announced to the ghostly accumulation of molecules. “I came in the back way because I had to walk the last four blocks. My truck bit the big one again. Let me in, okay?”
The door swung open to a dark kitchen. “How'd you know I was here?” Tom asked, still not showing himself, his voice low.
I stepped inside. There was just enough illumination cast by the galaxy of light-emitting diodes on the electronically controlled coffeemaker, the microwave oven, and all the other labor-saving wutzitses and widgets that decked the room that I could discern his face if I looked out of the corners of my eyes. He was not smiling.
“You always dodge to your left,” I said. “So I looked to my
right. A white boy like you shouldn't try to skulk in modern kitchens, or you should at least put on more than just a pair of blue jeans. You glow like a beluga whale basking under a full moon.”
right. A white boy like you shouldn't try to skulk in modern kitchens, or you should at least put on more than just a pair of blue jeans. You glow like a beluga whale basking under a full moon.”
“Spent a lot of time watching whales on that ranch of yours?” he asked dryly.
“How I do wish it was mine. Right now, I'd sell it and buy myself a new truck.”
Tom was still not smiling. “Somehow, I don't see you doing either.”
I said, “It suits my personality to keep duking it out with that same old heap of rust. But hey, we've had an earthquake. Now maybe there'll be a little extra work for this girl geologist.”
“Girl detective,” he replied.
Like I said, Tom was trying to marry my skills as a geologist to my raw talent for forensic work. Part of our agreement was that I didn't have to take any crap from him. I popped him in the gut with a loosely balled fist and was surprised to discover how firm it was. He smelled of sex. “Go take a shower,” I muttered.
He chuckled under his breath and padded off toward the bedroom. While he bathed, I sat on the edge of Faye's bed, trying to discover what had moved her to demand my presence. She lay in bed facedown, with a pillow over her head, refusing to explain herself.
“Come on, Faye,” I said. “I sacrificed a perfectly good twenty-year-old pickup truck getting here. Now tell me what's got you playing ostrich or I'm leaving.”
“Take my car,” she groaned. “My keys are on the table by the door into the garage.”
“Your four-by-four? Didn't you say that the clutch on that âmiserable bucket of bolts' is slipping like it's on banana peels? I don't mean to be picky; it's at least fifteen years younger than my truck, and the leather seats are oh so cushy, but I just got my leg out of a cast, andâ”
“I meant the Porsche. The clutch is stiff, but you won't have to ride it.”
“I can't take your Porsche. What will you drive?”
“The four-by is going into the shop on Wednesday,” she muttered. “I won't need it before then. If I live.”
“You sick, huh?”
She didn't say anything for a while, then, “Yeah.”
“Stomach flu?”
Pause. “Yeah.”
“Oh. So I guess you don't want me to get you anything. Cup of ginger tea?”
“Nooooo ⦔
“But really, I can't take your car.”
“Take it, please. I. Am. Going. Nowhere!”
“No, really, Faye. There's open season on cowgirls driving sports cars. Someone would take a shotgun andâ”
“Then we'll both be out of our miseries.”
Now, that sounded a little bit nasty. Not like Faye at all. I yanked the pillow off her head. “Hey, what's going on?”
She cringed.
I was just about to say something else when Tom came out of the bathroom, buttoning his shirt. He gave me a stern look and flagged me toward the door that led out into the hall. “Come,” he said. “She wants to be alone.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but Tom drew me out the door by my arm. I followed along, figuring I'd wait until Tom went to work, then try again.
Maybe they had a spat, and she's just waiting for privacy.
Faye and Tom were the odd couple, he being over twenty years her senior and obliged to work for a living, but otherwise, they were both intellectuals, and as such, they got along like a couple of ⦠well, intellectuals. They did their fighting abstractly, and in private.
Maybe they had a spat, and she's just waiting for privacy.
Faye and Tom were the odd couple, he being over twenty years her senior and obliged to work for a living, but otherwise, they were both intellectuals, and as such, they got along like a couple of ⦠well, intellectuals. They did their fighting abstractly, and in private.
Tom dragged me back down the hall into the kitchen, turned on the lights, and began to rustle up some breakfast. He set to
making the coffee, which he ruined by adding milk, and sicced me on the eggs. Sneering as he pulled the carton out of the pristinely clean refrigerator (oh, to be able to afford Faye's housekeeper), I said, “Where's the bacon?”
making the coffee, which he ruined by adding milk, and sicced me on the eggs. Sneering as he pulled the carton out of the pristinely clean refrigerator (oh, to be able to afford Faye's housekeeper), I said, “Where's the bacon?”
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