The cattle in the stalls behind him were making low groans. The cattle in front of him were too. And the cattle beside him. They were looking at him like he was one of their own.

He wiped morning dew from his face and stretched his stiff muscles. His back was sore, and his neck hurt. And the smell of cow pies was strong.

“Was wondering when you’d get up,” said Joseph, who sat in the corner. “Thought you’d sleep all the way to Mobile.”

Joseph was already eating peanut butter from a can for breakfast, fingerful by fingerful.

“How long have you been up?” Coot asked.

“Long enough to watch you have an ugly dream,” said the old man.

“Me?”

“You was moaning and groaning at something. Maybe it’s ’cause you stink so bad.”

Coot sniffed his own jacket. He smelled like manure. “You don’t smell too good yourself, you know,” said Coot.

“Maybe, but I didn’t sleep all curled up with that black mama cow like you did.”

Joseph licked the peanut butter from his finger like it was an ice cream cone. Joseph loved peanut butter because it didn’t interfere with his whiskey habit. Bread, for instance, interfered with whiskey—it soaked up all the contents in the stomach, he’d often tell Coot.

Joseph extended the can toward Coot. “Want some peanut butter?”

“No thanks,” said Coot. “It’s all yours.”

“You sure? A boy needs breakfast.”

“I’m sure.”

Coot rubbed his face and felt the beard growing on his jaw. He wondered what he looked like. He hadn’t seen his own reflection in weeks. He knew his general appearance had probably gone downhill. He probably looked as ragged as the old man did.

Joseph was a good man with questionable morals. But a good man nonetheless. He took Coot under his wing the moment he met him the night in the train yard. They became inseparable almost immediately. And the more Joseph’s health declined, the more Coot began to find himself responsible for the crippled old man, until it almost seemed as though Coot was Joseph’s babysitter.

Soon Coot alone was responsible for Joseph’s survival. He did his best to ensure Joseph had at least two meals per day and a place to sleep. They were glorified hobos, but if Joseph had been on his own, he would’ve surely died in a train yard somewhere, unnoticed.

But the old man’s personality was as vibrant as any Coot had ever known. He perceived life in a different way than Coot did. He was a brilliant man dressed in rags. Coot had never met a man so smart. There was a lot Coot didn’t know about the man. But in the years they’d been together, Coot had come to almost idolize him.