Erin Striff

Erin Striff

Fissureman

Palos Verdes, CA

September, 2024

Ed never thought he would ask his father for help with a job again, let alone take him back to the landslides in Palos Verdes. But someone had to convince the Wilsons it was time to evacuate, and Ed was close to giving up. It was fifteen years since Ed took over his dad’s business stabilizing homes in the Portuguese Bend landslide area, but some of the old homeowners still preferred his dad. They wouldn’t feel that way if they heard how he talked about them.

Ed drove up to the retirement home. His dad hadn’t even pulled his cane into the truck before he demanded, “Why would you tell the Wilsons to evacuate?”

“Because there’s going to be a landslide tomorrow.”

“You and your woo woo methods.” His dad’s voice had an edge to it.

Ed jerked his elbow at the stack of printouts between them. “Didn’t you read the land reports I e-mailed you?”

“Those won’t pin it down to the day, and you know it. No wonder they don’t believe you.”

“They believed me until the news started getting bad. It woulda helped if you hadn’t always told them what they wanted to hear. That their house could be saved. That they had time.”

“They did have time,” his dad said. “And now it’s run out. Give people enough money and they think they can tame the land. But Mother Nature always bats last.”

Ed retraced their old commute through Torrance, with its bungalows and strip malls and the faint metallic smell of the refinery, and up into Palos Verdes, where the sweet scent of eucalyptus cut through the ocean air, and mansions perched on once-pristine bluffs overlooked the Pacific.

“It’s impossible to live up there now,” Ed said. “After all that rain the last two winters, the land’s not moving a few feet a year like it used to. More like fifty.”

“It was always impossible,” his dad said. “And they bought those houses anyway. We’ve both made a good living off their foolishness, and now you want to kill the goose.”

Ed’s dad had been a general contractor specializing in home adjustment and damage restoration up in Portuguese Bend. Developing the area back in the fifties had reactivated a slow-moving prehistoric landslide, but there were methods of stabilizing the houses. His dad was happy to have his son join the business, to teach Ed how to read instruments and reports and to call in geologists and engineers who could bring hopeful news. And Ed followed his dad’s lead until the day he felt an irresistible urge to work his hands into a fissure in the ground. He felt the water beneath him and had a sudden understanding of exactly how the earth was moving, and how he could help.

Where his dad saw rich homeowners ready to throw good money after bad to preserve their ocean views, Ed saw people whose determination to save their homes kept them from reading the signals the land was sending them. Ed discovered that if he felt the earth, he could predict, usually down to the day, when the land would slip. Armed with that knowledge, Ed could tell their clients when to fix it up, when to sell up, and when to move out. But lately, with the landslides accelerating, there had been a few surprises. His predictions were occasionally minutes, hours, or even days off.

Ed drove past the old sign as they arrived in Portuguese Bend: “Use Extreme Caution: Constant Land Movement.” The road beneath them rose and dropped, the asphalt rippled and cracked. Sewer pipes ran alongside PV Boulevard, the land too unstable for them to be buried underground. “It’s the most beautiful place in the South Bay,” his dad said, hitching his thumb at the sewer pipes, “but it’ll always smell of rich assholes.”

Ed drove into the hills, where many roads were closed due to damage. The city was offering to buy all the houses in this area for seventy-five cents on the dollar. He parked his truck in front of the Wilson’s sprawling adobe house, perched above a canyon. A wild peacock pecked at the new crack in the earth where the house had slipped another few inches below the driveway. His dad took a swipe at the peacock with his cane, nearly losing his balance.

“Leave the bird alone, Dad.”

“Why? Rich people brought them here back in the day. It’s not like they’re native species. You know the damage they cause. Those damn birds don’t belong here any more than these houses do.”

The peacock flapped awkwardly up to the top of the roofline and fanned its blue-green feathers like the star of a nature program. It started pecking at the roof tiles. One loosened and crashed to the ground.

Ed guided his dad down the uneven walkway to the front door, where the Wilsons greeted him as an old friend. Ed trailed behind, the silent sidekick. They all went under the house to evaluate the damage.

The Wilsons’ house was stabilized the same way many others had been in Portuguese Bend. His dad had brought in a team to lift the house and replace the foundation with an enormous I-beam, which could be leveled with jacks at each end. But the homes still slid a couple inches a year, so when the foundation tilted, cracks formed or windows blew out again, folks like the Wilsons called up Ed and his dad to have the house adjusted.

The Wilsons talked about the landslide like they’d forgotten it wasn’t normal. Mrs. Wilson cheerfully said she could tell the house had shifted because her sheet cake cooked lopsided. Mr. Wilson made cracks about having the best mobile home in town. Not one of the houses in their neighborhood was within the original property lines. But they had no idea it would get so much worse. Nobody thinks that their house will slowly inch its way down a hill until it finally collapses.

Ed’s dad read the inclinometer and adjusted the jacks until the house was level again. He showed them the report made by the city. “I think it’s time to take that buyout.” But they just asked him to check on their generator, in case they lost power. After all, the reports didn’t say the landslide would happen tomorrow.

Ed ducked out. That crack in the earth was calling to him. At the front of the house the peacock, dumb as a rock, was pecking at its own reflection in Ed’s hubcap. Ed turned his back to it and crouched over the fissure. He could smell the earth, the sulfuric tang of the bentonite clay. Maybe he’d been at this house the very first time it happened. As a teenager, on one of his first days on the job, Ed felt the overwhelming urge to stick his hand in a crack in the earth. And today he felt it again.

He worked his hand into the fissure. It was dark and warm and slippery down there. It felt deep and secret, both internal and external, pulsating and alive, moist like pressing his tongue into his cheek, but rough like the roof of his mouth. He slid his other hand in, one lined up behind the other. He could feel the land, rich with layers of volcanic ash transformed over centuries into bentonite clay, interlayered with shale. And he could feel the groundwater seeping in, lubricating those weak seams, making the hillside slip. A damp basement smell. The water from all that rain, from septic systems, sprinklers. The land wanted to slide, to flow, taking the earth and houses with it. The sensations overlapped, tangled. Was the landslide still going to happen tomorrow? Now, he wasn’t so sure. Ed could feel someone watching and he snatched his hands back. It was his dad, making his way unsteadily around the side of the house.

“Don’t let them see you doing that,” he said, pointing at Ed with his cane. After all this time, the way Ed thrust his hands into the earth still made his dad deeply uncomfortable.

“What did the Wilsons say?”

His dad shrugged. “I couldn’t get ‘em to move out, but they’re gonna put some breakables in storage. Her teapot collection or something. So that landslide better happen tomorrow, like you said.”

“It will.” Ed took a deep breath. “Either that or the next day.”

His dad laughed. “You know, your wife says you’re running the best con in town.”

“Is that what you think?” Ed shot back.

“I gotta admit, you’ve made some lucky guesses. But I’m sick of acting like a grown man playing in the dirt means a damn thing.”

Ed drove him back to the retirement home in silence.

The Wilsons’ house didn’t move at all the next day, and Ed wondered if he really was losing his touch. But the day after, half the street slid twenty feet into the canyon, and all those houses were condemned. The governor declared the landslide area a state of emergency. Gas and electricity were cut. Ed spent the day in Portuguese Bend, doing what he could to help his clients who were cleared to return. They wanted him to install generators and solar-powered showers. Like homesteaders, they were living out of ice chests, lighting their way with lanterns, giant-stepping over cracks that ran through their living rooms. And still, they wanted to stay.

That night when he got home, Ed’s wife Jen said, “It sounds bad up there. Half my clients won’t even look at houses in Palos Verdes.”

“There’s plenty of places to live that aren’t in the landslide area,” Ed protested. When he met Jen, she had just started in real estate, and he’d been able to provide her a steady stream of business up in Palos Verdes.

“If they red-tag all those houses, you won’t have any clients left,” she said. “Have you ever thought of a career pivot?”

Ed looked at her blankly. “What kind of pivot?”

“So, people who do what you do, sensing water underground, are called dowsers.”

“Dowsing? You mean with the sticks?” asked Ed. “Those weirdos are a bunch of cranks.”

Jen showed him her phone, too close without his reading glasses. “Maybe so, but look, even well-drilling companies hire dowsers. You’d make a killing with all the drought in Southern California.”

“I don’t just find water,” he glanced at her phone and looked away. “I feel the energy of the water and land moving together. No company’s going to hire me to do that.”

Jen went back to scrolling, but he saw her roll her eyes. “People will believe anything, as we’ve seen.”

Ed paused. “Hey, did you tell my dad I’m running the biggest con in town?”

“I just meant you’re good at keeping your clients happy,” she said, adjusting his tee shirt. “And you’re making a lot more money than I am. I’m proud of you.”

“I’m trying to help them stay in their homes for as long as it’s safe,” he said.

“I know. If you were smart, you’d convince those Robber Barons to buy property in Portuguese Bend, like they did in the Outer Banks. Then you’d make real money.”

Jen had already told him how rising tides and coastal erosion had doomed a whole street on a North Carolina barrier island. The houses went from having ocean views to water lapping at their stilts in a few short years. Home-owners couldn’t claim on insurance until the houses and all their contents were destroyed, so they left their homes for the ocean to claim. Then a group of tech billionaires, who called themselves Robber Barons, each bought a condemned house, betting which would last the longest. They videoed as each toppled from its stilts, racking up views.

Ed shook his head, disgusted. “Those Robber Barons won’t want houses in Portuguese Bend. Most of them will just collapse, anyway. Only a few of them will fall over cliffs.”

“Yes, but you could tell them which house will fall, and when,” Jen said.

“They’d pay you a fortune. And I’d love to move down to the beach—Redondo or maybe even Hermosa—wouldn’t you?”

“Sure,” Ed said. But who would believe his predictions when his own wife didn’t?

Maybe Jen made some calls to fellow real estate agents, or maybe Ed’s talent for reading landslides was noticed by the right people, because a month later, a billionaire named Timo, who even Ed had heard of, texted him a video message, his face nested in a massage table. “Dude, I hear you’re the man down in Portuguese Bend.”

Timo described how in North Carolina, he and his friends took bets on which house would outlast the others, then hired local experts like Ed, to help them predict when each house would be condemned and the stairs up to them removed by the town. They installed above-ground septic systems, solar-powered generators and secured unheard-of local permits to keep them habitable. When the storms came and right before the houses fell, the Robber Barons threw a wild “stairs up” party in the house that was projected to last the longest. The party was livestreamed and tied to product launches, and continued even when the stilts of each house were submerged in water, waves crashing against the windows.

Jen had shown him videos of what happened next. At the last minute, speed-boats came to rescue the guests, and the houses toppled into the ocean, one by one. As the buildings disintegrated, thousands of floating objects were released: the first house had been filled with rubber duckies, the second, toy sailboats, and Timo’s winning house contained thousands of little messages in bottles. Each was emblazoned with the name of the corresponding Robber Baron’s company, which made for great advertising. Ed couldn’t imagine having the kind of money these guys did. Maybe they just ran out of normal things to spend it on.

“I want to create a whole compound up in Portuguese Bend,” Timo said between sips from a bendy straw. “And I’m not just flying in for the final party. I want to live there, with you making sure I can stay until the moment before it falls into the Pacific. The ultimate creative destruction. Just sign the NDA and next week you can show me houses that fit my vision.”

It sounded like a terrible idea, making these homes a playground for one of the world’s richest men. But it would help whoever sold their house to him— Timo would certainly pay a lot more than seventy-five cents on the dollar. And he was probably going to buy the land anyway. At least Ed could warn him and whoever showed up to his party before a landslide came—he could save lives.

Once Ed signed the NDA, Timo’s assistant texted him with co-ordinates to meet on a hilltop above the site of the ancient landslide. Ed was to bring nothing but the knowledge of the three houses in Portuguese Bend which were most likely to fall into the ocean, whether or not they were for sale. Ed thought it was a wind-up or maybe a test. But then the sound of a lawnmower became a distant helicopter. As it landed, Ed realized it was piloted by Timo, who jumped out and awkwardly fist-bumped Ed. Timo was famous for being tall and skinny, and under all of the paramilitary clothes it was difficult to tell if he’d got the rumored muscle implants.

Ed drove Timo to a row of three mansions which for years had been moving down a slope, ever closer to a cliff face. Ed had already thrust his hands in the earth in multiple places just beyond the property lines. Soon, he predicted, they would fall spectacularly into the ocean.

“Perfect,” said Timo. “Everyone loves a good ruin, but I want to live in a pre-ruin.”

“Why?” asked Ed, wondering if that kind of money made Timo a different species altogether.

“I want to train my prefrontal cortex to live every moment on the edge of catastrophe without the distraction of stress.” Before Ed could ask what that meant, Timo started talking into his collar like a secret service agent, negotiating some deal.

Ed surveyed the land. He wanted nothing more than to stick his hands in the earth again, to feel the pressure of the groundwater and coastal erosion, the earth straining to stay whole. He yearned to feel inside the fissures, the energy that radiated from them like heat.

“How long do these houses have?” Timo asked.

“About a year.”

“How do you know?”

Ed started to explain the geography of the landslide area, how ancient ash turned to slippery bentonite clay, how the groundwater lubricated the landslide, but Timo held up his hand. “Tell me what none of the experts can.”

Ed thought for a moment. “I can feel the water below us, and the way the land, these houses, we’re just gliding across the top of it.”

“Bro, that sounds like surfing,” said Timo. “Out on my board, I feel how the wave is breaking and I can align myself with it, and read it all the way to the ocean floor.”

“Exactly,” Ed said. Finally, someone understood. “I feel the flow of the water beneath me, and it tells me where and when the land will move.”

Timo frowned. “I thought LA’s whole problem is that there isn’t enough water, so they steal it from somewhere else. Just like that movie, Chinatown.” Timo was only in his thirties, but liked to use dated pop culture references to appeal to a broad range of followers.

“Not here,” said Ed. “There’s too much groundwater, from the rain the last two winters, from all the people. The city installed a bunch of dewatering wells, pumping millions of gallons into the ocean just to drain it, but the land’s still going to slip.”

“Beautiful,” said Timo. “I’ll make all these houses into a compound and throw a party right before it falls.”

“What if the owners don’t want to sell?”

“Believe me, they’ll sell,” said Timo, smiling. “Every day these houses spend on this cliff they accumulate more and more energy. I’m the guy to harness it.”

And Timo must have known exactly how much money to offer, because all three houses were empty by the end of the month. He knew just how much to offer Ed, too—a quarter of a million dollars—enough for him to put the rest of his business on hold. Life-changing money for both Ed and Jen.

Working for Timo was the opposite of working for Ed’s other clients, who wanted to pretend their houses were fine. Timo put vintage inclinometers (the kind found on the Titanic) in every room so he could show off how much each house was listing. He wanted glass panels installed in the floors of each of the houses, like the glass-bottomed boats you could take to Catalina Island. These would show off the I-beam foundations, and the jacks that needed to be adjusted so frequently.

Timo told Ed about kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold to show the beauty of its flaws. Ed found an artist in Japantown who reluctantly agreed to fill the cracks in the ceiling and walls with gold. The goal was not restoration, but “visible mending.” Instead of fixing buckled wood floors, Timo wanted a system of elevated plexiglass walkways, where one could marvel at the Jenga of floorboards below.

Not only did Timo swear by Ed’s daily land readings, he didn’t need them to be backed up by engineering reports, though he must have been getting those, too. Ed was proud of the faith Timo put in him. For the first time, he didn’t feel like he had to hide his skills, though he still only put his hands into the earth in private. Maybe the more Timo believed in him, the more everyone else would, too.

But Ed still couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable around Timo, who on social media called himself “the most popular man on earth.” Jen begged Ed for details about him, but the NDA was very clear that Ed wasn’t allowed to discuss anything about Timo, from the work he did for the government (something to do with his data deletion company, omiT) to what he had for lunch (protein shakes in an array of odd, fleshy colors). And since the most interesting things Ed and Jen had to talk about were now off-limits, he didn’t argue when Timo asked him to move into the freshly-built pool house in the center of the compound. It was just until what Timo had taken to calling the “launch date,” when the compound would be destroyed in a landslide. Ed and Jen agreed to call most days and any- way, she had real estate to sell.

“Take that guy for all he’s worth,” she said, as he hoisted his duffel into his truck.

Ed had never spent unbroken time on the land in Palos Verdes, never woken from dreams able to act on the compulsion to work his hands into the fissures in the earth in the dead of night. He had never felt so in touch with the terrain slipping away underneath him. And with unlimited opportunities to read the earth, he was sure he could improve his accuracy.

But the more delighted Timo was with the compound, the less he considered how its creation affected the land. He built a network of ATV trails that led to a new helipad on a bluff above the property, disturbing the site of the ancient landslide. Timo called the compound Vesuvius, after the seams of clay beneath him that had once been volcanic ash, and designed the pool based on ruins dis- covered in Pompeii. Ed warned him it would add to the groundwater, but the only compromise he could get was that the pool was made out of fiberglass so it would move with the earth, as were the rectangular columns surrounding it.

As the main house slowly slipped below street level, Ed warned him their utilities were about to be cut, that the compound would have to be run on solar and generators. This seemed to energize Timo, who sent him sketches of rope ladder bridges leading to the ATV parking lot. Timo’s employees were always coming and going, and he joked that their fear of landslides kept the meetings short. Ed couldn’t tell the difference anymore between his own wonder and resentment. Money allowed Timo to speak a language whose only word was yes.

Ed took to reading the land at all hours of the night, but the signals he got were increasingly chaotic. When the compound sunk to six feet below street level, Ed finally admitted to Timo that the landslide was coming months sooner than he’d promised. Worse, he wasn’t able to pinpoint the exact day it would happen. Ed prepared himself for Timo to get angry and fire him right then.

“Wow, we created some resonance here, man,” Timo said, opening his calendar app.

“What’s the last possible day my people can plan the party?”

Frustrated, Ed asked, “Do you want to go down with the house?”

Timo grinned. “You mean like the guy riding the nuclear bomb at the end of Dr. Strangelove?”

“Sure.”

“I want to be there until the last second, harnessing the union of potential energy and kinetic force, converting it into mental energy,” Timo said, tapping his head. “And I know people who will pay large sums of money to be there when it happens. But I’ll be the last man standing.”

“What if I’m wrong?”

Timo waved him away. “I believe in you. And I believe in the money I’m paying you.”

But all Ed believed in was the land beneath them, and it didn’t care about what the people who lived on it wanted. He envied its indifference. The land never lied to you, it never made promises it couldn’t keep.

On the day of the party, Timo’s guests (friends? Clients?) began arriving by helicopter and ATV, carefully descending the rope bridges in their white silk tunics and togas—the theme was The Last Days of Pompeii. omiT employees passed plates of dates, figs and honey cakes. A peacock landed on the roof, fanning its feathers. Ed wondered if it had been trained, until it pecked at the roof tiles like all the other peacocks did.

Timo appeared on a balcony. He waved and called out, his voice amplified.

“Welcome to the most beautiful landslide on earth.” The peacock startled away. Moments later, everyone turned and pointed at a helicopter which had just landed. The peacock was slowly descending toward the spinning blades. Ed rushed down the path and out the back gate, but he still heard the slice of the blade, the explosion of nervous laughter at the dead bird.

Ed checked and re-checked all three houses in the compound, thrusting his hands deep in the fissures beneath them. Would the chattering partygoers be safe for the evening? The readings he got were so muddled, he didn’t know anymore. There was too much noise, too much chaos. He should warn Timo. But about what, exactly? Ed’s dad would say there was no more of an emergency than there ever was.

The sun was going down behind Catalina. Ed watched the pipes from the dewatering wells pump streams of groundwater into the ocean below him. Maybe if he felt the earth closer to the water source, he’d get a clearer signal. Ed picked his way down the cliffside, until he found a fresh wound in the earth. He held his breath, and worked his hands inside, feeling the energy of the water more than he ever had before. He could sense the force of water coming through not just his hands but the soles of his work boots. Small rocks started tumbling down the cliff face. It was happening. The whole ridge was going to slide into the Pacific, taking all three buildings with it. He sent Timo a text, then activated an app that set off a siren across the compound. He had to climb back up and save everyone.

But by the time Ed scrambled back up the cliffside, gasping and exhausted, the grounds were nearly empty. A few panicked guests climbed up one of the rope bridges—the second one dangled. ATVs snaked up the paths. Timo was sitting at the apex of the roof where the peacock had perched earlier.

“Is everyone okay?” called Ed.

“Time of their lives,” said Timo. “My helicopter’s on its way. You said we got five more minutes. Do you stand by that?”

Ed hesitated. There was no way to know. “Sure.”

The earth beneath them lurched. The remaining rope bridge snapped, only moments after the last person scrambled up it. All Ed had done was set off a siren, but hadn’t he saved those people? Without warning, the fence gave way and the pool crashed over the cliff, the columns toppling.

“See that helicopter up there?” Timo yelled. “In one minute, my pilot’s going to hover over the roof and drop a rope ladder. The moment the house starts to go, I’m stepping on that ladder and I’m going to watch the land fall below me. It’s me against nature and I’m gonna win.”

“What about me?” Ed called.

Timo grinned. “You do you, man.” He took out his phone. “Just stay outta my shot. I’m livestreaming.”

The helicopter started descending. Drones hovered around Timo like satellites, each with their own cameras. One of the roof tiles the peacock had been pecking at crashed to the ground. Timo lost his footing and slid down the roof, stopping just at the gutter, his phone still in his hand, the drones orbiting him. Timo frantically waved his arms at the helicopter and the rope ladder tumbled down next to him, almost far enough that Ed could reach it from the ground below, but not quite.

Timo grinned at his phone and filmed himself stepping on the ladder as if he’d been practicing for weeks, which, Ed realized, he probably had. The helicopter flew toward the cliff’s edge, toward the sunset. Somewhere, Jen was watching all of this on her phone.

But the rope ladder snagged on a jagged piece of the metal fencing that ran along the compound. It stretched taut, but couldn’t pull free. Timo screamed something to Ed, struggling to hold the ladder as the helicopter strained against the heavy rope. Ed hesitated. He was sorry, but not sorry enough to die. He sprinted across the patio to the other side of the compound. Now he could even feel which flagstones would tumble, which would stay whole, and which would smash into powder on the basalt rocks below. He knew every inch of the land, and he was part of it. He inhaled the scent of shale and slate and bentonite.

Ed jumped onto a fiberglass column that had been beside the pool. He took a wide stance, like those guys on surfboards did. He would read the earth all the way to the ocean floor. He was going to live and his dad and Jen would finally understand. Around him, the compound lurched and dropped. He heard the whoomph of an explosion but didn’t turn to see it. And when the ground gave way beneath him, he knew he would ride that wave of rocks and dirt and dust all the way to the Pacific.

Erin Striff lives in West Hartford, Connecticut. Her stories appear in Split Lip Magazine, The Forge Literary Magazine, and elsewhere.