Adelaide's Christmas Carol

ADELAIDE’S CHRISTMAS CAROL

 

The mountain top village was, for almost two years, empty of people or so it seemed. The wind blew in powerful gusts driving the snow through the broken windows and doors that swung with the wind in the wrecks of what were once shanties more than they were houses. When the small coal mine closed the miners and their families went away forever.


The miserable, battered church with it’s broken steeple stood apart from the houses on a small rise appearing to beckon to parishioners, no longer there, to come and welcome the coming of Christmas. The church was empty, filled only with biting cold and the seeping, wind driven snow.


The minister left with all the others leaving the wreck of his church to whatever fate and God would have in store for it.


 

Adelaide had never left the village owing to the fact she was both deaf and crippled. She had lived with her mother and father until he was killed in a mine accident. Adelaide’s mother had considered her daughter to be a burden and left with the other villagers, leaving her deaf and crippled, sixteen-year old daughter behind.

 

The church had an electric organ. It wasn’t much of an organ. No pipes. It didn’t matter that it had no pipes since it had been broken for years and didn’t play. Even if it did work there was nobody who knew how to play it after fat Mrs. Macon died. She only knew three notes, B, D and F sharp. The fact that there was no electricity made even a healthy organ impossible to play. None of those things mattered to Adelaide who could play and hear the organ in her head.

 

Adelaide loved the organ and played it during the nights after everyone was asleep. These past two years had been wonderful with the village empty of people. She had written and composed music for a grand Christmas carol. Tonight, they would all return and fill the pews of the church and hear Adelaide’s Christmas Carol.

 

It was a forest ranger who found her slumped over the small organ. There was a smile on her face.

 

Bob Flicker

12-15


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