Todd knew everything there was to know about the ATSF (excepting technologically abstruse engineering and design specs, and facts of a strictly proprietary nature). At the same time, Todd had been slow in certain areas of his social and psychological development. George and Dahlia had no name to give their son’s condition, unaware as they were of Hans Asperger’s groundbreaking research being conducted at the time in Vienna. Todd’s uncle Johnny merely called his nephew, with breathtaking insensitivity, “the idiot-genius.”
“I’ll search the front end of the train and you take the rear,” suggested George to his wife. The boy had excused himself to use the washroom as the three were finishing breakfast in the company of a gentleman who made his living selling microscopes for classroom application. Once Todd came to realize that their table companion knew absolutely nothing about the Super Chief beyond those items that pertained to his own traveling comfort and convenience, Todd retreated into his ATSF Railway System Time Table and only looked up to note to no one in particular that by his personal railroad chronometer (his most prized possession) the train was pulling into the La Junta, Colorado station (an operating stop only) a good one minute early.
Dahlia agreed with her husband’s plan and turned to initiate her half of the search. Both parents, though concerned, remained calm. Furthest from their minds was any possibility that Todd would have left the train even if he’d wanted to; it wasn’t due to stop again until 4:35 that afternoon (another operating stop with no discharge or receipt of passengers permitted) in Albuquerque.
As she reached the passage door, Dahlia stopped and turned back. “And we should meet back here, don’t you think?”
George nodded.
“Oh, and George?”
To which a porter, coincidentally placed between the two, replied, “Yes?”
“I beg your pardon. I was speaking to my husband,” explained Dahlia. The porter, who was trained to respond to the name “George” as tribute to the Pullman company’s founder, smiled indulgently.
Dahlia continued: “If you’re the one to find him, George, don’t scold him. I’m sure he doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong.”
“I don’t scold the boy. I never scold the boy.” Then, addressing the porter: “Our son Todd has wandered off. If you find a boy unattended, would you ask him to return to our room?”
“Yes, Mr. Heyman,” answered the porter. “But he isn’t a little boy, if I recall. He’s a great big boy.”
“He is,” said George, “and getting bigger every day. Todd isn’t like other children. But, of course, you’ve probably noticed that already.”
The porter nodded. “He asked me if I’d ever worked the ‘El Capitan.’ And ‘did the ATSF need Pullman porters on trains without sleeping compartments?’ That’s an ‘all chair’ car, don’t you know. ‘Why,’ I said, ‘every train needs a porter. There are lots of things that we porters got to do.’ He said if he couldn’t be an engineer, he’d be a porter. The boy loves trains.”
“That is a fact,” said George.
“And he ain’t the only different sort of boy on this train. Mr. Bergen’s riding with us on this trip. And he’s got his wooden boy Charlie with him — got the little top hat on and everything.”
Dahlia raised her eyebrows and said, “Ahh!” She and her husband loved the Chase and Sanborn Program with Edgar Bergen and his giggly sidekick Charlie McCarthy, and Todd was especially fond of Charlie after he heard him say on the radio how much he liked going places on trains. “I’d love for Todd to get the chance to meet him.”
Neither Dahlia nor her husband George was aware that their son was doing that very thing at that very moment. Both Todd and Messrs. Bergen and McCarthy were in the train’s observation car. Bergen’s impromptu performance for the occupants of that convivial car had been suddenly and effectively co-opted by Todd’s arrival, by the sudden entrance of a teenaged boy who, dead set on meeting his friend Charlie, had proceeded without attendance to proper railroad passenger etiquette, toward a bold introduction of himself.
Here is what Dahlia Heyman saw when she walked into the observation car eight minutes later:
“Aren’t you one smart cookie!” pronounced Charlie McCarthy through his ventriloquist Mr. Bergen.
“I’m not a cookie. I’m a boy.”
“Well, bright boy, let’s see if there’s anything you don’t know about this railroad.” Charlie turned to a thoroughly engaged woman wearing a blue suit with pleated skirt, her long blond hair curled into a sausage in the back. “Care to play ‘Stump the Choo-choo Genius’, my dear?”
The woman nodded enthusiastically, her morning Bloody Mary sloshing a little out of her highball glass. “I want to go from Lawrence, Kansas — I’m originally from Lawrence, Kansas — to Flagstaff, Arizona. I absolutely adore Arizona!”
Todd took hardly any time at all to deliver his response. As his mother looked on from the lounge door, he said, “You could take the Number Three — that’s the ‘California Limited.’ It makes a flag stop in Lawrence at 10:13 in the morning. But it’s a flag stop. I’d recommend the Number Nine, the ‘Navajo.’ It stops in Lawrence at 1:48 in the afternoon. It gets into Flagstaff at 9:25 the next evening. The ‘California Limited’ arrives in Flagstaff at 6:05 the next evening. But Lawrence is a flag stop. You take your chances with a flag stop.”
The man who was seated with the woman carefully conned the timetable in his possession and then looked up in amazement. “The kid’s right. He’s exactly right.”
Charlie had been doing all the talking up to this point, but now it was Mr. Bergen’s turn. “There’s a new show on my network, NBC, that I think you’d be perfect for, son. What’s your name?”
“Todd Heyman.”
“And how old are you?”
“I’m almost fifteen.”
“Good. You’re under sixteen. They want boys and girls under the age of sixteen. You live in Chicago? The show broadcasts out of Chicago.”
Todd nodded.
“What’s the name of the show?” asked Dahlia, making her way through the car. “I’m Todd’s mother.”
“Did you know that your son is a veritable genius? Don’t you agree, Charlie?”
Charlie nodded his wooden head and said, “He’s a regular Casey Jones Einstein.”
“It’s a summer replacement show for Alec Templeton, Mrs. Heyman. It’s called Quiz Kids. I know the producer. I’ll talk to him.”
Back in their room, Dahlia shared the good news with her husband.
“What a kick!” he said. “And it’ll shut my brother Johnny up for good — my own kid on the radio. What do you say, champ?”
“Will Charlie be on the show too?”
“No, honey,” said Dahlia gently. “Charlie McCarthy is on Chase and Sanborn with Mr. Bergen.”
“Oh,” said Todd, turning his dog-eared timetable over in his hands. He looked out the window. “Coming back, of course,” he said quietly to himself, “that lady would have to catch the Number Ten in Flagstaff at 5:40 in the morning. That might be too early. Yes, yes, that just might be a little too early.”