excerpt from the book

Today I get the angel all to myself. I’m pacing around his pseudo-Egyptian obelisk, alone. He stands twenty-five feet above me, on his granite shaft. His name is Moroni and he gleams golden in the sunshine, looking a little like a Roman emperor and sort of like a monk doing the Boy Scout oath.

But mostly the impression he gives is of a man in a dress who’s been magically turned to solid gold.

Taking a few steps, I pull a dried chicken thigh bone out of my pocket and poke it into the ground. I press it down with the heel of my left foot till just the top shows, then move on to the next spot and do it again.

I’m on top of the Hill Cumorah, the birth place of Mormonism, and for a little while it’s all mine. This is it: I’m standing right on the spot where the All-American religion began. I don’t get the whole Mormon deal yet, not by a long-shot. The backstory is pretty complicated and there are rites and rituals that no outsiders are allowed to witness. But for now, this is all I need to know:

1) Moroni is a dead guy who lived here a thousand years ago.

2) He was resurrected and became an angel.

3) He showed a teenaged prophet where to dig on the knoll to find a set of golden plates inscribed with the long-lost story of this place.

So what am I doing on this green hillock in the rural nowhereland between Rochester and Syracuse with a pocket full of chicken bones? It’s really pretty simple: I’m trying to be a Mormon. I figure that I don’t need to believe. All that matters is the doing. If I act like a Mormon, then understanding will follow.

Burying my secret bones isn’t desecration, but a joining in. It’s my way of entering the Mormon world and making it my own. The Prophet said that the hill was a mass grave for ancient warriors. I imagine thousand of bodies heaped up inside, hundreds of thousands of skulls, swords, ribs, spears, helmets, femurs, breastplates and jawbones.

It’s unlikely that I’m standing on a vast pile of skeletal remains and rusty weapons. But I’ve made sure that there are a few real bones in the hill. Though they’d come from barbecued chickens, now they’re part of the occult ambiance of the place.

After I push all seven enchanted spikes into the ground, evenly spread around the obelisk, I circle the statue seven more times and I can feel some angelic power radiating from the statue.

Luckily, I finish just in time. A family of real Mormons is coming along the walkway from the hilltop parking lot. They’re quiet, reverent, modestly-dressed and they can tell, instantly, that I’m not one of them.

I nod and try to give them a smile, though this probably looks more like a guilty facial spasm than a real sign of happiness. I can feel it already – fear of being found out, a low-level building of panic. They can tell I have no legitimate business being there, and still they give me their happy-happy Mormon smiles.

Plaques at the base of the obelisk explain the prophet’s great moment of revelation, when he dug up the Golden Plates right where I’m crouching. I pretend to read the inscriptions, but I’m really giving quick sidelong scans to make sure none of my chicken bones are too obvious. A big American flag flaps and snaps in the breeze. Far away, other quiet little hills, though not sacred like the one I’m crouching on top of, can be seen in the charmingly bland countryside.

“Such a beautiful place,” I say. This is true, though what I’m really thinking is: “please don’t hurt me.”

“Have a nice day,” the father replies, glad to see that I’m leaving.

“And you too, brother.” My voice sinks on that last word, but he hears it.

He gives me a closer look. No confrontation, no accusations. Nobody points a knobby finger at me like the Grand Inquisitor and shouts “blasphemy!” No Sacrilege Squad sirens wail from the base of the hill.

I give Moroni a last look, raise my hand just like he does, and feel a little beam of invisible blessing power shoot down from his fingertips.