That, of course, would be the Chesapeake & Ohio freight train made up of a steam locomotive and several cars, which was already running nonstop on a large oval of track on the dining room table. The relentless din of metal spinning on metal, as the cars made loop after loop, reverberated through the table’s wooden surface, making it even louder, but Darryl had argued that the engine needed to be broken in, and that having it run continuously for an hour or so would have the effect of fine-tuning the toy’s mechanism.

Christina had chosen well. When her husband saw what she’d brought home from Choo-Choo’s Trains, he argued they should open it up immediately, set it up, see if it worked, rather than wait two more days until Auden’s actual birthday. “You know, to find out whether it’s defective, in case we need to return it.”

“Maybe I should have bought this for you,” Christina said. “Boys and their toys. They never grow out of them, do they?”

So they waited until late afternoon Friday. Darryl left work early, and when Auden came through the door, tossing his backpack onto the bench in the front hall, his parents were standing there below a happy birthday banner they’d strung across the archway into the living room. And, still in its packaging, sitting upright, was the Chesapeake & Ohio train set.

Auden and his father set it up right then and there.

“Now we can’t leave it here,” Darryl said. “But I can get a four-by-eight sheet of plywood, or maybe an old door or something, set it up on some sawhorses, and put it down in the basement. How does that sound?”

Well, that sounded just fine to Auden. But that would mean a trip to the lumber store, and probably the better part of a weekend for his dad to get the set up and running, so for now, at least, he could have fun with his new gift right there.

“We’ve done this all backwards,” Darryl said as his wife cut thin slices of cake for each of them and placed them on Happy Birthday paper plates. “I haven’t even got the hot dogs on the barbecue yet.”

“I don’t think it matters what order we eat it all in,” said Christina. “Eat a little bit of cake, and then a little later we’ll have dinner.”

Auden shoveled the chocolate cake frosted with white icing into his mouth in record time, then bolted from the table to check on his train.

“He loves it,” Darryl said. “Good choice.”

“I knew he would,” Christina said.

Auden, back in the dining room, had his hand on the throttle of the transformer, slowly scaling back the train’s speed until it came to a stop. Even at a standstill, it gave off a low-level hum, the electric smell of ozone hanging in the air.