Them Bones

THE BOX X

Smith’s Diary

I was talking with Colonel Spaulding in his bunker.

‘When I was a boy,’ he said, taking a book out of his personal locker, ‘this book was it.’ It was The Book of Mormon.

‘You were raised a Mormon?’

‘The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints,’ he said, almost automatically. ‘I still do that, listen to me. And I haven’t been to services in thirty years.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Well, you’ve probably never read it,’ he said. ‘Most people never have, never will. But parts of it keep coming back to me.

‘See, there are a couple of narratives within narratives. It took me a long time to realize that as a kid. The golden plates were supposedly found at Cumorah, but they also recapitulate earlier records also buried there, from an even earlier time.’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, the earliest migration involved prophets who sailed from Jerusalem and came to America. They built great cities here, but fell to fighting among themselves. They divided into the Lamanites and the Jaredites. The Lamanites were punished, their skins turned red, and all their cities fell to waste and ruin.’

‘Those are the Indians?’

Spaulding laughed. ‘I know, sounds like the old Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, or lost Phoenicians, or Egyptians, doesn’t it? When I was a kid, I was hot on archeology. But I’ve forgotten most of it, like I thought I’d forgotten most of The Book of Mormon. Seems some stuck with me, though.’

‘It would be a lot easier if it were true,’ I said. ‘Maybe Arnstein can go speak with them?’

Spaulding laughed, a different tone. ‘From what I remember, those theories about lost Romans and such came about because the early white settlers who found the mounds and earthworks couldn’t believe the Indians had built them. The only Indians they knew were the ones still in the area, who hadn’t moved there in many cases until fifty years before the whites got there. The Indians didn’t know where the mounds came from, either. So the settlers thought they predated the Indians themselves. And were a much more advanced civilization than the Indians could have had.

‘So they searched around for examples of Old World civilizations who had ever used mounds and high fortifications. That was nearly everybody, of course – Welsh, Mongol, Roman, Egyptian, all of them came in for their turn as the original Mound-builders.’

‘These people we’re fighting are certainly better at warfare than we thought they would be,’ I said.

‘The old adage is that primitive doesn’t mean stupid,’ said Colonel Spaulding.

‘Shooting at us is one thing,’ I said. ‘But I think it was the radio business that really upset everybody.’

‘Well, we deserve it,’ said Spaulding, with an anger I didn’t know he had. ‘We’ve disrupted their lives. We killed them as surely as if we held weapons to their heads. They can’t understand we didn’t want it to happen.’ He went quiet, staring down at his desk.

‘We’ve seen enough killing. We’ve seen the whole world killed. Now we’re killing the past, too. None of us wanted this, least of all the Indians.’ He picked up The Book of Mormon again, opened it.

I stood up. ‘I’d better check the guard.’

‘Certainly, Marie,’ he said. ‘Send Putnam over here, will you?’

I saluted and left. Sometimes Spaulding was hard to figure out.