A Christmas Carol: The case of Ebenezer Alaska

The budget was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of its burial was signed by the Governor, the House and the Senate. Old Budget was as dead as a doornail.

I didn’t much care. I sat in my house clutching a state-sealed dividend check. Outside, voices cried for school funding, for roads, for ferries. “Bah,” I muttered, endorsing my check. “Humbug. Let them cut elsewhere. This is my money.”

The clock struck one. A knock at the door. A figure stood in the cold night — like a child, yet ancient — dressed in overalls and a white woolen coat, frost clinging to its collar.

“Rise and walk with me,” the spirit commanded.

The walls of my home dissolved. We stood on a vast, frozen tundra beside a solitary drilling rig. “Christmas 1967,” the spirit whispered. “Watch.” The drill bit spun deeper into the earth. “They’ll find it soon. You’ll be rich. But remember — you started with nothing.”

Warmth now, years later. A wood-paneled room. Jay Hammond turns, facing me: “The dividend makes us aware that what’s in the lockbox is our money! This is a share of what our money earns!”

The ghost’s face darkened. “They created it to protect the future. Now you sacrifice the future to protect the check. How quickly you forget — it was a means to an end, not the end itself.”

“But it is my money!” I argued.

The spirit vanished, replaced by a jovial giant, robed in furs seated upon a throne of sixty bickering shadows.

“Come in and know me better, man!” he roared, leading me to a crumbling school. Inside: thirty-five children, one exhausted teacher, not enough desks, too many leaks from melting snow. Drip. Drip. Drip.

I approached a sullen boy crouched in back. “I know him! Timothy, from my cul-de-sac. What’s wrong with him?”

“There is nothing for him here. No art, no science, no instruction, no hope — why should he bother?”

I fingered the check in my pocket. “But surely he’ll be fine? They have enough!”

He opened his robe, revealing two wretched figures clinging to his legs. “This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see written Doom.”

“Have they no refuge?” I cried.

“Are there no charter schools?” the Spirit mocked, throwing my words back. “Are there no correspondence allotments?” He bellowed and slouched back into his throne. “You have one final visitor.” He pointed to a distant figure.

The third phantom approached slowly, gravely, silently; it was shrouded in deep black.

We stood in an auditorium bulging with its mass of children. Timothy sat lost among them. In front, a screen broadcasted a distant teacher. No attention was paid.

“This is insanity!” I cried.

The phantom said nothing, leading me to a hotel lobby, where tourists gathered.

“So, Alaska finally folded?” asked one, scrolling his phone.

“Completely,” another shrugged. “Couldn’t fund the basics. Everyone who could leave, left.”

“What about that dividend they were so proud of?”

“Oh, they kept it. But between federal income taxes and the sales tax, most of it evaporates anyway.”

“At least they stuck to their principles,” the first one smirked.

The Spirit pointed toward a headstone: Here Lies the Last Frontier.

I woke. My bedpost. My room. My check still in my pocket.

I threw open my window and called to a passerby. “Boy! What day is this?”

“Why, it’s Christmas Day, sir!”

“I haven’t missed it!” The choice was still mine. The legislative session hadn’t yet begun.

The spirits had shown me the path we’re on. We still have time to choose another.

Alan Abel has been a resident of Anchorage since 2011, where he met his wife and is raising two daughters. He works in Alaska's oil and gas industry.