It was amazing what details people noticed-the focal points their minds chose to lock on to when the moving world went blurry. A woman driving on Northern Lights Boulevard tried to puzzle out why “the road wouldn’t stay still.” So many people’s stories described a sluggish process of discovery: you had to discover the earthquake, even though it had already been shaking you for what felt like a very long time. Another woman watched her cast-iron pot of moose stew hop autonomously off the burner, as a neighbor girl outside yelled at a large tree to stop moving. Mistaking the physical sensation of his body heaving from side to side for dizziness, he deduced that he was having a heart attack. Big Winston had been kneeling at his used car lot, preparing to push a vehicle that wouldn’t start. It was pure sensation, coming on faster than the intellect’s ability to register it. The earthquake overwhelmed people the way the strongest emotions do. Small earthquakes were familiar occurrences in Alaska, yet all around Anchorage, the recognition of this one seemed to flower in people slowly, and meekly, arriving only at the tail end of some stupefied, time-stretching lag. ![]() The onset of the quake unfolded like this for many people. She said the word aloud: “This is an earthquake.” But it rolled, wavelike, as though some humpbacked shadow creature were surging under its surface, heading for town.įinally, Genie found a word that could fasten this chaos together in her mind. ![]() The pavement didn’t break apart it was still solid. Suddenly, through the windshield, she watched the road roll away from the car. Genie’s eyes were seeing it, but her mind couldn’t organize all the discordant information into a coherent story. The world and everything in it appeared to be convulsing. And as it did, she saw a crack open in the masonry over the man’s head, then reclose. But then the building swayed away from the three of them-the building itself moved! Genie watched it bending left, then right. The man was trying to protect the two women at a corner of the building out of which they’d just blundered, hugging each one to an adjoining wall and clinging to the brickwork to brace himself. Outside, the three pedestrians were back on their feet. She worried the car might be flipped on its side. She tightened her fists around the steering wheel to keep it from jerking. Genie’s car was hopping more ferociously now, leaving the ground, edging into the adjacent lane. They did not seem to be walking, exactly, but lurching. A man and two women came out of the liquor store to her left. They looked like a grotesque accordion, Genie thought, opening and closing. A line of cars parked at the service station were bouncing into one another and separating again. Genie rolled down her window and heard a cacophony of clanging. She tested another theory, less surely this time: “It must be a hard wind,” she said. Genie looked over her shoulder, toward the mountains. The initial shuddering swelled into what one report described as “a savage, grinding roll.” The electrical lines overhead started snapping like whips. The motion turned merciless, omnidirectional. It knocked the traffic lights out power in Anchorage was gone. Then, suddenly: a forceful, heaving jolt. For a moment, they bounced violently, without speaking a word. She already resented having to run this errand for Wins, and now she steeled herself for more hassle. The car started bucking as soon as Genie’s foot touched the brake. The traffic light turned red as Genie and her son approached the intersection of C Street and Ninth. And with a couple of hours until curtain time for Frank Brink’s Our Town, one young actor was alone in the theater at Alaska Methodist University, tidying the costume closet beside the stage. ![]() Volunteers at the Third Avenue Elks Club Lodge were coloring Easter eggs for their upcoming hunt. The Salvation Army had just concluded its Good Friday worship. Most people had already left work for the start of the holiday weekend. Snow was falling as Genie turned right on C Street and headed downtown to the bookstore with Wins.
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