■   We hang out at the post office until it opens and then head back to the yard, stopping en route to break our fast on a couple Butterfinger bars and the filched oranges. We’re not sure exactly what our next stop should be; we’re trying for Ohio, but Rapid-T — the name by which I came to know my guide — says Buffalo might be our best option.

The departure area for Selkirk is on the other side of the yard, so we trudge along a nearby road to get to it. To obtain an overview of the yard, we head to a highway bridge near the middle of it, giving Rapid-T a chance to expand my train knowledge. Rapid-T came to train hopping after a childhood spent as a train buff. When he looks at a yard, he doesn’t just see a bunch of cars and engines (units in railroad parlance.) Fascinatingly, he provides a rundown of the different types of cars — what grainers can’t be jumped, what units have historic significance, what type of loads different cars are carrying.

Around 5 p.m., we find a train going to Willard, a big Ohio yard Rapid-T has been in numerous times. The first hopable car we see is a mini grainer — like the grainer from Sunday, but with one, much, much smaller cubbyhole. I force my 6”2’ frame inside, with my legs hanging out, rubbing against the metal lip. After a few minutes of that, all circulation is cut off in my legs and I switch to a kneeling stance, in which my feet are inside the hole and my upper body hanging out. Twenty minutes later, I’m trying to think of other stances that might work when I hear my guide’s quiet “Yo.” Since the train hasn’t left yet, he thinks we have time to find another car. A few minutes search turns up a boxcar; its door is closed, but it’s not sealed, meaning there’s nothing inside. A few minutes work with a crowbar is sufficient to unlatch the door and shove it back.

Once inside, I can actually lay out, the first time I’ve laid prone in a day, with the steel toe of my boot braced against the wall in case of sudden stops. (It’s always a good idea to put your feet facing the front of the train. Hobos have had their necks broken by laying with their heads against the wall.) The jostling of the boxcar soon lulls me to sleep, but I wake up several times to watch the huge winter moon as it goes one direction in the sky and we go the other on the tracks. The temperature has dropped still further — I know it’s bad when Rapid-T starts complaining about how cold it is. In truth, it’s not so much the wind and weather that makes it cold as the steel floor, which leeches my body heat like it was getting paid for it, despite a sleeping bag, four layers of clothing and a plastic tarp shielding me from it. Wearing my boots to bed doesn’t help much with the cold, but makes it a little easier when I have to relieve my bladder in the middle of the night — a process that introduced me to the odd pleasure of watching the world stream by while going to the bathroom from the door of a box car.

The moon is still big and beautiful as we pull into Willard around 2 a.m., lighting our way through the lines of train stretching every which way. Cold and tired, we walk the three blocks to town, where the tipsy barkeep at the Victory Inn lets us huddle in a corner, listen to old, sad country songs — the type of music you can only find on the jukebox at a place like the Victory Inn, a tin-roofed tavern built some hundred years ago. We chat with the locals a bit, including a guy named Weed, who looks exactly like you’d expect a guy named Weed to look. Weed plans on heading to Los Angeles, he says, as soon as he can save up enough money from his job unloading trucks. When the bar shuts down at 3 a.m., we head back to the streets, declining an invitation by a horribly drunk woman to “come party” (“Where’s the party?” she asks the barkeep. “I dunno,” he slurs. She looks around the bar. “It’ll be at your place,” she says, pointing to me. “I don’t have a place,” I reply. “Then we’ll have it at my place,” she says. Her muscle-bound boyfriend looks on and glowers.)

We head a few more blocks down “the stem” — hobo speak for a town’s main drag — and fetch up at the Post Office, which is left open all night. We discuss the historic WPA painting decorating the post office wall and play a few rounds of blackjack (sans money) before both falling asleep, Rapid-T with his head on a table holding tax forms and me lying on the floor next to the radiator.