The lean escapee found a shopping cart and traveled the streets of Los Angeles gathering things that he found beautiful and useful. He loved blue glass and chrome, red cloth and books. He collected all kinds of books. Some he could read and others not. He ranged all over L.A., sometimes sleeping in Griffith Park, sometimes in the cavelike feeders to the concrete L.A. River. He was robbed every other month or so but only raped once, by a wild man who came upon him sleeping in an alley off Florence, when he was thinking of going back to his alley valley.Once Thomas went down to Malibu and walked the beaches where he’d gone with his brother and Dr. Nolan. He didn’t stay long because the sun on the sand was too bright.The police stopped him all the time, but he used Bruno’s Social Security card as identification and claimed that he was twenty-three. The police believed him because after all that time living outside, Thomas’s voice had become rough and his face was quite weathered and beat-up.He had no friends.
