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zoo, and we’re the animals, we’re the animals all neatly tucked into these beds, waking up every morning puking at the green walls and smelling the urine on the floor. We’re hurting and we’re praying that we can get out of this place. Somebody, give us back our bodies!
    And each day I train in an exercise room that is very crowded with broken men, bodies being bent and twisted, put up on the parallel bars. Our therapists, Jimmy and Dick, train us hard. We put on braces and crawl on the floor. We’re pissing in our pants and crawling into the bathtub. We’re jumping up and down the curb, learning how to use our wheelchairs. There is a big wheel in the corner and they’re strapping a puny guy with glasses to it. I’m watching the clock and the kid is trying to spin the big wheel around. There are machines like the wheel all over the place, and there’s pain on all the faces. Some of us are trying to laugh, we’re talking about the beer that comes into the hospital in the brown paper bags. But you cannot mistake the pain. The kid with the long hair is in the hallway again, the kid who looks in and never does anything but look in.
    Now I’m grabbing the weights, twenty-five-pound weights, I’m grabbing them and lifting them up and down, up and down, until my shoulders ache, until I can’t lift anymore. I’m still lifting them even after that, I’m still lifting them and Jimmy is talking about his model airplanes and then he and Dick are lifting me up to the high bar. There are newly invented machines sold to the hospital by the government to make the men well, to take all the Willeys and the Garcias and make them well again, to fix these broken bodies. There are machines that make you stand again and machines that fix your hands again, but the only thing is that when it’s all over, when the guys are pulled down from the machines, unstrapped from them, it’s the same body, the same shattered broken man that went up on the rack moments before, and this is what we are all beginning to live with, this is what the kid standing in the hallway is saying with his eyes.
    It’s early in the afternoon. I’m standing on my braces, holding on to the parallel bars. My mother and little sister have just come through the doorway. It is the first chance for them to see me try to stand again. My mother is frightened, you can tell by the look on her face, and my sister is standing next to her trying to smile. They are holding each other’s hands.
    My legs are shaking in terrible spasms. They’re putting thick straps around my waist and around my legs and now my arms start to shake furiously. My mother and sister are still standing in the hallway. They haven’t decided to come into the room yet. Jimmy is strapping my arms along the pole and my big oversized blue hospital pants are falling down below my waist. My rear end is sticking out and Jimmy is smiling, looking over to my mother in the corner.
    â€œSee,” says Jimmy, “he’s standing.”
    I start throwing up all over the place, all over the blue hospital shirt and onto the floor, just below the machine. Jimmy quickly undoes the straps and puts me back in the chair. My sister and my mother are clutching each other, holding real tight to each other’s hands.
    â€œIt’s really a great machine,” Jimmy says. “We have a couple more coming in real soon.”
    I turn the chair toward the window and look out across the Harlem River to where the cars are going over the bridge like ants.

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    F OR ME it began in 1946 when I was born on the Fourth of July. The whole sky lit up in a tremendous fireworks display and my mother told me the doctor said I was a real firecracker. Every birthday after that was something the whole country celebrated. It was a proud day to be born on.
    I hit a home run my first time at bat in the Massapequa Little League, and I can still remember my Mom