King of the Pile

"Isn't this great?"
When the ferry docks in Bolivar, Butch cranks up the Econoline and drives onto the shoulder. He waits for the traffic to pass him by. When the road is clear, he pulls a U-turn and drives back onto the ferry headed to Galveston. He'll continue on late into the night, carrying forth on the going price of mud minnows free for the taking if you net them in the ditches near the causeway, and checking in on a few favorite Dumpsters. There's nothing much to be had this night but a rifle stock poking out from a pile of coffee grounds, and though he senses that the rest of the rifle is in there somewhere, he doesn't go looking for it.

"I don't like to dig around in garbage, this wet stuff."
Tomorrow he'll go out looking again, unless he goes fishing instead, because Secret No. 10, when you're hustling garbage for a living, is that you never know what America might be throwing away today. Which, to Butch, translates like this: "Every day I wake up, and it's a brand new world.