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His name is Toady , not Toddy. And he has a new home.

He has a room with a single bed, a lamp, red curtains and a bathroom outside the door. He has new jeans, new running shoes and a new jacket, as well as a new pair of blue bedroom slippers that keep his feet warm.

And he has family. And they have him.

A few weeks back, relatives read about him in the newspaper you hold in your hands, and a few days ago, they picked him up from his camp beside the railroad tracks in the woods near Bennett College.

They took him toward home.

They hadn’t seen him in a decade. One of his cousins worried he was dead.

Not quite.

Toady is very much alive — especially away from the place he now calls a “box.’’

“I don’t miss that box now,’’ Toady told me the other day. “It was raining last night, and it was already cold. Now, I have a roof over the top of my head and ain’t nothin’ to be missed, to tell the truth, unless you miss hearing the train.’’

His family, well, here’s what they had to say:

“It was prayers answered,’’ said Ron Flack , Toady’s first cousin . “Relief. Joy. And thankfulness. I called my mom, and she broke down and cried. We’re a close family, and it’s something that his mom would have wanted us to do — take care of him and try to get him help.’’

That’s Toady, not Toddy.

He was the son of a certified nursing assistant, the stepson of a tobacco farmer. He earned his nickname collecting toads as a kid. He fixed bikes, raced bikes, picked tobacco and played football for Northeast Guilford High.

He drove a truck, liked to party and never got married. Sometimes, he would return home to see his family after being gone for weeks at a time.

But after his parents died, Toady disappeared. His family didn’t put out a missing persons report because he had disappeared before. This time, he never came back.

That’s what I heard from his family.

They looked for him. Flack checked police records. He also checked the morgue and the emergency room at Moses Cone Hospital, where he now works as the nursing director for the surgical intensive care unit .

But Flack was looking under the wrong name. To him and his family, Toady was Stephen Neal, the stepson of Harvey Neal. To the police, Toady was Stephen Vanstory, the son of Virginia Vanstory Neal.

I wrote about him on Christmas Day, about his view of our city beside the railroad tracks in the woods near downtown.

He had a mottled beard, a bluesy baritone, and he liked to sing in his makeshift tent. He had his Santa globe, his blankets and his mattress and box spring under a spider web of cardboard and tarps blown from passing trains.

He told me he had lived there for nearly three years, and he stayed there because of a contest.

Right.

Several readers called and asked if they could help him with anything. I went back to see him. He said he needed nothing. He told me he was getting ready to leave. He had just turned 52.

That was a few weeks ago.

Then, on Monday, I got a phone call.

“I’m calling about the man you wrote about who’s living in the woods,’’ the man told me. “His name is Toady.’’

“No,’’ I told the caller, “his nickname is Toddy.’’

“No, it’s Toady,’’ he said. “He’s my brother.’’

On the phone was Harvey Neal , Toady’s brother. And that’s how it started.

The reunion happened Wednesday — right there on the railroad tracks.

“It’s been a long time,’’ Flack said, shaking Toady’s hand. “You want to go with us?’’

“Damn, you gotten big,’’ Toady said to his brother as they hugged.

“How you doing?’’ his brother asked.

“Making it through, making it through,’’ Toady told them. “Got one home and now I got another home. I wanted to stay out of the cold.’’

“You’ve proven it,’’ Flack said. “You’ve been out here a long time. You want to go with us?’’

“That ain’t no problem,’’ Toady responded. “No problem. Let me go get my bag.’’

With that, Toady’s three years beside the tracks ended.

Two years ago, News & Record photographer Jerry Wolford discovered Toady and started visiting him at his camp in the woods — talking, taking pictures and trying to figure him out.

Toady told us his nickname was Toddy and told us stories about what he owned — a factory, a bank, a ranch in Texas and his property beside the tracks.

He saw his camp beside the tracks as his home — until Wednesday.

“I never got a sense that he wanted to leave,’’ Jerry told me minutes after Toady left his camp.

“But I saw that in his eyes today. He asked me when I got here, 'Are they coming?’ His ingenuity helped him survive out here, but this was his moment. I could tell. He was sitting on the railroad tracks ready to go.’’

And away he went.

Two days ago, Jerry and I visited Toady at a nursing home in Caswell County. He sat in a bedroom with yellow walls and a closet with new clothes.

This week, if all goes as planned, Toady will move to a nursing home in Rockingham County, and there, he’ll live surrounded by three generations of his family.

Right now, he’s on medication to combat the pneumonia he caught in the woods and the paranoid schizophrenia he’s battled much of his life.

And right now, Toady is OK.

He doesn’t miss his Santa snow globe. And he’s singing. This time, it’s a different tune.

It’s a long way home,
It’s a long way home.
This yellow room,
This yellow room,
How long
I’m going home,
I’m going home.

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com