Mormon 6

And now the coda to my dreary mini-series:

We marched toward the Lamanites. I couriered the king a letter asking him to meet in battle near Cumorah Hill. He approved. We marched to Cumorah and pitched tents. It was Year 384 and every last Nephite who could fight was there.

I was getting old, as you can tell by the date. And I was torn. I wanted my people to live, but, maybe more, I wanted the sacred books to survive. So I buried all the plates at Cumorah Hill, except for a few I gave to my son Moroni.

The Lamanites advanced, looking for all the world like an ocean-sized mob of giant locusts. Our anxiety levels went off the chart. Most of us had no hope: death was it. Personal extinction. I knew better. But most of my friends didn’t.

They landed on us with bows, arrows, clubs, axes, and, of course, swords: the amputation brigade. They killed probably ten thousand of my men, felled me, thought they’d killed me and so didn’t take the time to really finish me off.

Only twenty-four of us lived past that battle. (That included, thank God, my son Moroni.) All day the next day I watched ten thousand bodies from this battle carried and thrown into piles. Then ten thousand more from Giddonah’s army. And ten thousand each from these commanders: Moroni, Lamah, Gilgal Limhah, Jeneum, Cumnihah, Moronihah, Antionum, Shiblom, Shem, and Josh. Ten more times ten thousand each and you get to the twenty-four left, not to mention any who went Awol, defected.

All the rest were rotting. They say, “Dust to dust.” But there was no dust here. Just soft flesh hardening with rigor mortis as the buzzards landed and picked their fill.

This was my death psalm:

I don’t know whether to hate you or love. I didn’t know most of you, but felt the collective exhaust of your foul lives. Why not give the Prince of Peace a chance? Why not at least try him out once in your tinderbox lives?

If you had, you’d still be here and I wouldn’t be singing this grotesque lament. I’m numb with disbelief. But I’ll get over it. You’re dead and you won’t ever get over that. One chance and you dumped it out like a bedpan.

I watch you decay. I smell the disgust of heaven. How long till you’re pieced back together in that divine facsimile of what you once were, only to be set down in God’s courtroom reviewing the evidence of your lifelong criminality?

If he finds enough worth saving in you, then you are blessed. You self-awareness continues, happily. You’ll pal around with some of the greats.

But I doubt it. Forgive me for my morbid take on you. But I know at least that you, as I will be doing soon, have crossed the threshold one only crosses once. God already knows the denouement.