A Time to Heed the Warning of the Purple Hand of God

As I look back on it, maybe I should have listened to Quirky Quake.

When that six-point-sixer shook L.A. like a baby on a water bed, all I could think of doing was running and screaming.

If I were as cool and sensible as Quirky Quake advised, I would have ducked under a heavy oak desk and waited for the shaking to subside. Then I would have walked calmly to my disaster supplies.

Quirky is a cartoon logo of the Southern California Earthquake Preparedness Project. He frowns at panic. His instructions are clear: Seek shelter. Stay calm.

I stumbled down the stairs from our bedroom shouting incoherently for flashlight batteries, cursing Lucy Jones and thinking I would rather die than survive by drinking water from a toilet tank.

I am never at my best at 4:31 a.m. on a Monday morning when my house is whipping around like a twig in the wind. Only the calming presence of my wife, Cinelli, kept me from going completely to hell.

“One step at a time,” she kept saying as we picked our way through fallen debris in total darkness, “one step at a time.”

For a moment, I thought I was in a parade. That’s what hysteria can do to you.

*

Good morning. I am back from special assignment just in time to offer perspective on what Caltech seismologists are calling the Medium One. Lucy Jones is one of the seismologists. We see her on TV. Whenever the earth trembles, Lucy is there, like sunrise over the Rockies.

I don’t mean to make light of a situation that has cost lives and destroyed property. This is not a good time in Happy City. But I keep thinking about Quirky Quake.

He is a cool dude in sunglasses and sneakers who for years has been trying to get us prepared for earthquakes. I scoffed at everything he stood for. I should have listened. But do we ever?

Quirky, for instance, insists that we know where our emergency equipment is in the event of disaster. Normally, I can’t find my shoes in the dark, much less a crowbar or a camp stove.

But I’ve learned my lesson. Now I have a flashlight within easy reach, right next to the vodka and dry vermouth in crash-proof containers.

Our house still stands, by the way. We have survived floods, firestorms and earthquakes. “And every night,” Cinelli says, “I scan the skies for incoming comets.”

*

I should have known the earthquake was coming. The night before, the Purple Hand of God swayed slightly.

It is the detached hand from a mannequin. I found it in the garment district. The hand hangs on a thin wire over my word processor. One finger points downward. Cinelli says it is God’s hand, reminding me to write.

It swayed Sunday night. It was reacting to a foreshock, the way cockroaches in China flee for their lives when a shaker is coming. I should have heeded the warning of the Purple Hand.

Dogs are supposed to disappear in advance of earthquakes and return when it’s safe. Seismologists are said to salivate slightly. We do not have a seismologist around the house, but we do have a dog. I found him under a table. He may be smarter than I think.

It is also said that birds in cages peck each other to death just before a shaker hits, but we only have one bird. He had no one to peck.

Do we ever heed warnings? Sometimes, I guess. But mostly the survival instinct drives us forward down the eternities, firm in the knowledge that whatever monster crawls through the city won’t get us.

That works most of the time. When it doesn’t we cling together like children in the dark, and wait for the morning. It comes. Always. And we pick up the pieces and start all over again.

*

The airwaves were filled with inspirational messages just after the six-sixer. Bill Clinton flew west, Pete Wilson flew south and Mayor Dick tried to articulate his thoughts.

What impressed most was acknowledgment from Archbishop Roger Mahony, the Pope of L.A., that the Vatican cared. A special prayer was said, but we still had aftershocks. Thank the Pope but boil the water.

I went down to the epicenter. A small citrus orchard stood intact, but lemons were scattered all over the ground. Hundreds of them, gleaming in a strange amber sunlight.

Years from now when I think of the Quake of ‘94, I’ll think of them. And of the Purple Hand of God, swaying slightly overhead.

We’ll be all right. Light a candle and keep an eye out for comets.