The Voice of Weskam Station

Hubert Malcolm Davies was always the voice of Weskam Station. This tiny station, native to a village remarkable only for its lack of remarkability, saw the same faces pass every day. At dawn, the children embarked toward the schools of the neighboring towns, the adults off to work at their various locales, and the elders set out to brunch with their friends in the more sizable cities. But in the evening they would all return to the sound of Hubert's grandfatherly voice welcoming them back home.

They had all known Hubert once. He spoke as if he had no past as if he was born fully formed dispensing little pearls of wisdom between sips from his teacup at the corner cafe. He was always there, as far as anyone was concerned, for every Christmas tree lighting, for every wedding and funeral, clapping at every little ribbon cutting and picking up rubble after every local disaster. He had outlived the memory of a town without him and he was as much a cornerstone of Weskam as the stone itself. It was only natural that when the village, so behind the times, finally implemented a speaker system for the train station, that its voice be his. He spent so much time trainspotting at the station coffee counter, there was no greater fit.

His warm tea leaf and nutmeg tones and accent of a generation nearly gone warned of the coming trains and closing doors, read the names of the connecting stations, and welcomed travelers to his tiny corner of the isle.

But old Hubert did not live forever. He went as softly and quietly as the last vapor twisting off the bottom of the teacup. The village, all his adopted children in spirit, were determined to make sure his voice outlived him generations down. For years and years, the same tapes ran day and night through the increasingly aging speakers and it became a tradition to say, "Take care, Hubert" as you left or boarded the train.

Decades passed and soon the children on the trains bound for the schools had never met Hubert, never knowing him as more than the voice on the train. But even still, they bid him farewell. The grown folk were those children that he had helped at the library, now with careers of their own. The adults had grown elderly and were off for afternoon tea. And the old elders, well, they were with Hubert now, in one way or another.

In time, Weskam had to fight for Hubert's voice. The railway council decided on an overhaul of the trains' digital systems. One such change was with a digital voice that could be updated at a moment's notice to reflect schedule changes and accommodate the new stations that were being built along the line. Weskam flat out refused. The council had the gall to barge in and switch out the tapes for the new system anyone, during the cold, quiet days between Christmas and New Year. When the children and workers returned to their routine to find his voice stolen, they could not help but have a most silent, somber ride into the city.

That sadness was quickly sparked into action and, in the rubble-clearing manner of Hubert himself, they, as a village, hatched a plan. They collectively blocked the tracks, trapping a train going each way, until the conductors themselves shut the trains down until the townsfolk hopefully cleared the way. Day and night, day and night, the villagers lived at the station, chatting and playing games on the shut down trains, the tracks, and the platforms. The coffee counter gave all their brew away for free, fresh and hot even in the wee hours of the morning. Ladies brought home-cooked pastries to hand out to the train campers and folk of all ages brought their instruments to play together for the gathered crowds.

See, few stopped in Weskam but many had to pass through it, and having the station impassable for days caused an outrage. But while actual commuters were furious at either having their trips canceled or rerouted, others from towns that had never before heard of Weskam took up Hubert's cause after seeing images of the folk camping out on the commandeered coaches printed in the paper. Enough petitions, enthusiastic and fuming both, papered the doorstep of the council that they had to act. When they announced that they would be reinstating Hubert's voice, the village folk cheered in one last night of celebration before finally clearing the tracks after nine long days.

A kind and clever young man who had never set foot anywhere near the village sent a letter saying he'd be happy to digitize the tapes and let them work with the new and future systems. Copies were sent off and soon he emailed over the new files to be used and preserved indefinitely.

And so they were. Travelers who became accustomed to the same sterile, robotic voice, came to look forward to the one friendly announcer along their commute. Folk began to forget Hubert's legacy as time wore on, villages grew and melted together to form larger cities, and one by one the folks who knew Hubert in life eventually drifted out of it as well. There was a plaque dedicated to his memory, seldom noticed and more seldom read, especially as the station itself grew larger with many more platforms, seeing more and more passengers every day.

One day in particular saw more faces, new and familiar, than any before. No shops were open. The coffee counter, up until now a bustling cafe, sat empty and locked tight as the trains were bursting with five passengers per seat. This happened again the day after followed by the next. But after that, the trains became emptier and emptier until they did not run at all. Hubert bid the last train goodbye as the night sky grew darker and redder.

Some solitary souls passed by in the coming hazy days. One, under his breath, as he walked along the ash-dusted tracks, whispered, "Take care, Hubert."

The woods that had once wrapped around the tiny station finally crept back through its huge quiet frame with bunches of moss growing upon the indicators, the shop signs, and Hubert's plaque itself. Deer and rabbits scavenged around the unrecognizable platforms for a time, but even they disappeared one day. The moss eventually became dust and the woods became brambles.

A curious young boy, lightyears away, in another place and time, opened a file on an unmarked hard drive tucked away his grandmother's things, the things she took with her as she fled all those years ago. The file was named, "Christmas wishes."

Back on the dusty red planet that once was blue, on the morning of December twenty-fifth on a year lost to time and distance, a miraculously still standing speaker automatically crackled to life. And at that moment that same voice wished a very Happy Christmas to the dust, the wind, and the bones.

In the end, the voice of old Hubert Malcolm Davies was all that remained of Weskam station.