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HYLAND ere were other rooms in other hospitals and, finally, Johnny Bratton was allowed to step back onto the streets seventeen years ago. He has walked them ever since, refusing to settle at a halfway house or with an older brother. ere is always a letter from Hitler or a covered wagon surrounded by Indians to distract him, to let him know he must keep moving. "You don't understand, do you?" he says, and looks for a bus that will carry him to safety. If he is lucky, it will pass a movie theater and he can hop off and take refuge there. Movies give him something to cling to, something he can't seem to find anywhere else. "e fella next to you kinda looks like Paul Muni, don't he?" Johnny Bratton says. "I seen Paul Muni in a lot of pictures. Him and Errol Flynn. I don't think Errol Flynn ever made a bad picture. But he got in trouble, right? Him and all his women. Me, what I think you got to do is live a good reputation, like James Cagney. Yessir, the Yankee Doodle Dandy hisself." On Rush Street, that mecca of clip joints and cut-rate love, they say they have never seen anyone who knew as much about movies as Johnny Bratton. Sooner or later, he makes it up there every day to win his daily bread—and drink—with his vast knowledge. And if that fails, there is always out-and-out panhandling. "He can put the arm on you pretty good," says one old fight guy. "I figure it's good for a sawbuck if he sees me." To be sure, Johnny Bratton is always looking, always moving. He pauses only to gaze at his reflection in the windows of a disco. What he sees is a slightly stooped figure cloaked in a dirty over

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