"I thought it would be a piece of cake, that even a blind man could find work here," he said.

One freezing cold night, he stumbled from his usual corner near the Kum & Go over to a Dumpster near the elevators.

"It was dark and I had to get out of the wind," he said. Time went by, days went by, and he was too numb and cold to pull himself out. He kept sliding backward on the garbage.

"I was thinking, 'I'm just gonna die here,'" he said.

As a last resort he took a board — he clearly remembers it had some nails on the end of it — propped it up and put his last blanket on it. He got enough traction to get up, throw his backpack over the side and hurl himself to the ground.

It was mid-day, and Williams picked himself up and walked over to a bar. "Some guys in the bar — I knew 'em, they gave me money before — said they wanted to see my feet because I was walking slow and funny. I took my boots off and they said, 'Hey, man, you're gonna lose your feet.'"

They took him to the hospital. "That's all I remember," he said.

Everyone knew him

Williams is a growing statistic in the oil patch, but he had a name in Watford City.