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The small compartments lining the sleeping car's hallway, glass doors open, curtains swaying with the train, squeezed the corridor into a narrowness. With barely room for my crutch, I hobbled tightly toward breakfast, elbows in. Crutch, lurch, crutch, lurch.

A rail whomp threw me sideways, but I bounced against the wall, righting myself. It was all over before it was over, the train knocking me off balance, me vertical again, panting with fear and discovery. In quarters so tight, if I toppled forward, I would grab the wall, and toppling sideways, the walls would grab me. I couldn't fall. I could only go and go and keep going.

Which I was doing now, my head high, moving down the shoulderwidth passage entirely upright. Yes, bouncing occasionally from wall to wall, but gazing ahead, not looking down. Wouldn't my new physiotherapist be proud? He'd taken a 50-year-old's spastic right leg and turned the spasms into a walk. Twist your hip, he'd said. See how the right leg leaps? I had cringed as the inert limb did its involuntary flexing. Good, the physiotherapist said, use it. I twisted the right hip, the unfelt foot jerked upward and dropped somewhere ahead of the other. I had to see where the unfeeling right foot landed, lest the left foot trip over it. That's why I keep looking down.

But not now. Flailing unimpeded, almost like a runner, I was looking up. Without fear of falling, without fear of anything, hauling. Damn the carpeted goings-on below, I hadn't walked this free and easy for decades. On and on toward breakfast, eyes up, looking at things. The compartments' glass doors revealed people staring, scratching, yawning. It was all so wonderful. What a trip, in the true, 1960s sense of the word. Not the contemporary usage, not a trip to drop off a boat trailer at the in-laws or visit the Tomb of the Unknown Account Executive. But one of those hippie voyages of youthful pharmaceutical discovery. A trip, for people who had lost their way, lost the point, lost their minds or lost their job.

At the end of the car, I hit the electric switch plate on the door, whooshing it open. Below, metal plates slid across the floor, as the gap between coaches banged and crashed over a coupling far below. A paralytic's madhouse, but fuck it, I had come this far, and there was a candystriped handhold to my upper left. I grabbed it and dragged myself into the next car.

On and on. Sleeping car number two, and I was breathing hard, pushing the cardiovascular envelope. A glimpse of memory now, like the corner of a postcard. Parking my Plymouth Valiant somewhere near Union Street, San Francisco, and crutching toward a blind date, 25 years ago. When I could limp for blocks, never mind the sidewalks tilting, curbs dropping, pavements sagging. For I was young and neurologically intact enough to keep my speed and keep my balance.

The sidewalk crowd milling in front of Perry's bar, beautiful people of the 1970s, parted to make way for the lurching cripple with his crutch. Blind determination for a blind date. Did the waiting girl expect to meet a disabled man? No. Someone I barely knew in Los Angeles said someone he barely knew in San Francisco was this girl, and here's her phone number. I had made the phone call standing up, breathing deeply and working my bad arm to dispel terror and maintain vocal lightness. I must have cut quite a figure, twisting and limping into Coffee Cantata, offering my left hand to shake, right arm hanging crooked and twitching, me all smiles and forced cheer. Chit here, chat there, until it was over. Good night, and we'll have to do this again.

We didn't, of course. The girl, whatever her name was, did not return my call. Very well. I had steeled myself. Which now seemed rather pathetic, for the only steel had been in my leg brace. A young man with the wounded emotions of a child willing himself into adulthood. Laughing at everything the girl said. Swallowing his coffee slowly, lest the unlovable cripple came vomiting up. And now, one sad marriage and sadder divorce later, limping through a sleeping car. And feeling downright superior looking into spacious rooms with arm chairs and wide beds. Fancy quarters, but they only had a single window. Ha ha, and fuck them with their one-window suites. Whomp. A rail tsunami tilted me hard to my right. I teetered stiff as a statue through a compartment doorway. With cartoon speed, a woman inside shoved me into the corridor.

I kept lurching forward, because, as on the night of the blind date, stopping at was dangerous. Besides, I had adrenaline to burn off. All these close calls. Close to danger and death. And close to something else. It was just coming into focus as I limped through a vestibule. Close to help. The neighbors who had called the ambulance. The old woman who had just shoved me to safety. Bad people came at you from nowhere, but so did good ones. You had to be ready for either. And forward momentum was a fine thing, a joyous thing. And I owed a debt of gratitude to the old lady who had shoved me out of her compartment. But I had moved on, she had moved on, and it was all moving on, the farmers' fields outside, the sleeping car, the jiggling water glasses in the compartments.