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G a me”
l s o f the Walker
“Leve T o wnsend
©2010p e rm
httpane ntl
: / / y ar
frs h c h i
. i n / ve d :
6a

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—Christy Call
 LEVELS OF THE GAME
Timmy was an eleven year old smash­up metal crunching
addict. It started by chance. Crossing the street with head
down, playing Ace Combat on his Game Boy as the traffic
light turned red: brakes screeched and a car stopped
inches from him. He saw the bleached horror and fury of
the driver, the screaming rage. A weird coolness overtook
him.

A new game: when the light went from yellow to

red, he ran in front of a car then jumped back. He tried to
see how much skid mark he could get when the driver hit
the brakes. The longer the skid, the higher his high, the
higher his score. One day, a Chevy skidded into the
intersection and clipped a Toyota. Timmy was giddy.
Nothing to match this, not even the Drop Tower at Great
America, 225 feet in 4 seconds.

Next level: Collisions. Tricky. He had to watch the

oncoming car, figure how fast it was going, watch cars
from the other direction, figure how fast they were going,
traffic lights, all at the same time.

One day, he got a real smash up. Tow trucks were

called to pull the cars apart. Nobody hurt, just shaken and
swearing. The wild woozy off­the­ground feeling helped
smother his rage against the idiot bastard who’d run a red
and killed his parents.

No one got a good look at the small thin boy

vanishing across the street. He was careful to wear
something different as often as he could. He had various
hats and sometimes turned his jacket inside out. He
stayed away from the streets where he lived and went to
school.

Nothing much to do after school. He wasn’t good at

soccer or football, too short for basketball. And no one
was home much: Aunt Sue worked the second shift at St.
Francis Hospital and Uncle Mack was a fireman down in
San Mateo.

Walking to school a couple days after the big smash

up, a bigger kid, blonde shaggy hair, tapped him on the
shoulder. The kid looked a couple years older.

“You’re Timmy Duggan.” the kid said. “Been

watching you jump in front of cars. You’re pretty good.”

Timmy darted past him. The elder grabbed his

collar before two steps.

“Where you going?”

“Wasn’t me,” Timmy said. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not here to make trouble. Just

want to talk to you. My name’s Sam.”

“What about?” Timmy would have run again, but

Sam still had a hold on his collar.

He pulled Timmy into an alley. “It’s about a gang for

kids whose folks got hurt or killed by jerks that run red
lights.”

“What do you want with me? Timmy asked. 5

 litdis p
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“I read about your parents. Want to talk to you.”
ie w

“Maybe later, I got to go now,” Timmy shrugged and

sluffed off to school. But, an idea for the next level: Go
after red light runners. He reckoned it took even closer
timing and the cars had to be coming faster. He chose a
big intersection, Van Ness and Geary, for the first try. He
went there a couple days in a row, sat in the bus stop, or
had a coke at Mel’s Diner. Four­thirty, people getting off
work. He stood on the median, darted out as a green Land
Rover sped through the red and the blue Mercedes was
exploding into the intersection. Land Rover hit the
brakes, the car spun, faced the Mercedes. Head on.
Drivers slumped. Then both were hit from behind. Their
heads bounced. Timmy was ten feet tall, light enough to
float, fly over the city, free.

Next morning he was eating his cereal and Sue

showed him the picture of the accident in the Chronicle.

“I knew it was bound to happen, people in this city

in such a hurry; run lights all the time,” she said. “Can you
believe one of the drivers is blaming a little boy? Says he
would have made it through the intersection if the boy
hadn’t run in front of him.”

“That’s not a good excuse,” Timmy said. “Is it?”

He walked into school, ignoring everybody as usual;

their stupid remarks after his parents were killed made
him puke.

Sam was waiting for him after school. “Caught the

action on Van Ness yesterday, nice,” he said. “But hey,
that Mercedes didn’t do anything wrong. Got to think
about that. Come on over to my place. Meet some of the
gang.”

Sam lived with his older brother in a giant new

apartment in North Beach. Plush chairs and sofas, lots of
paintings on the walls in the living room. Rich. Sam had
his own room, a master. When he closed the door, Timmy
heard clicking and rolling sounds, like the room was
sealing itself shut, then saw thick gray metal bars
crisscrossing the back of the door. Heavy black curtains
over the windows. A bluish glow filled the room. Five
other kids, about Timmy’s size, appeared out of glow.
Timmy thought this was spooky in a good way.

Sam saw his look: “Only KARR kids allowed here,”

he said. “We mess up drivers that run red lights; teach
them a real lesson, something they’ll remember, like a
totally wrecked car, better than a crummy old ticket.”

Kids Against Red Runners Rules

I. Kids punish only Red Runners.

II. Kids cannot try to kill Red Runners.

III. If somebody else could get hurt, Kids cannot go after

a Red Runner. Abort.

IV. Kids must be under five feet.

V. Kids cannot tell anyone about KARR.

“You swear to these rules?”

7
 e ndr
n s e
w lk
t o wa “Sure,” Timmy said.

“You have to say, ‘I swear.’”

“Okay, I swear.”

Then the room clanged, sirens whined, orange and

purple streaks shot from wall to wall. The television and
sound systems blared. Four computers lit up: police
records on red light violations, DMV records on license
plates and addresses, GPS tracking, traffic pattern
recognition systems. KARR had hacked into state and city
records. They knew where every Red Runner car in the
city was, and the streets they used to get there, day and
night.

The next day Timmy and Sam went to the corner of

Lombard and Franklin to watch Juan. “We’re looking for a
red BMW, plate 1000101,” Sam muttered. “There it is!”

Just as the BMW blew through the red, Juan jumped

from the curb, the driver’s face lit up, the car swerved to
smack into the traffic pole, and its front end accordioned.

“See?” Sam asked. “See how Juan came at him so he

turned toward the pole?”

Sam put Timmy through training drills every day for

three months: math for timing traffic lights, eye drills on
tracking moving cars, angle drills for getting cars to
swerve a certain way, dances to avoid getting hit. In the
next six months, Timmy managed to create at least one
KARR incident every two weeks, more than anyone else in
the gang. But the high, the dizzy lightness, the forgetting,
wasn’t lasting as long anymore. He persuaded Sam to let
him scout his own hits. After a week studying patterns on
the computer, he figured, if everything worked just right,
he might get two Red Runners at the same time at Van
Ness and Broadway.

5:17: cars erupted from the stop lights. The black

Jaguar, plate 000 LALA, stopped at the light on Broadway.
The red Hummer, plate O2 BE ME, came down the slope
on Van Ness, the light changed, Hummer didn’t slow, kept
coming, now, Timmy ran out, Hummer hit the brakes, slid
sideways into the intersection, black Jaguar, driver with
cell to ear, leapt from its crouch at the light, metal tore,
glass shattered, air bags blown. Timmy was half a block
away, turned around and fist pumping and running home.

The next morning at breakfast Sue showed Timmy

the paper. “Look, that street is not safe. Huge accident,
both cars totaled. It’s a miracle the drivers weren’t hurt.
You stay away from there, you hear?”

Timmy turned away.

“You listen to me now. Enough has happened.”

Timmy didn’t say anything.

“Hey, where’s my kiss?” she called as he ran out.

He turned around, gave her a big hug and ran down

the stairs into a chilly fog. You did it, Timmy. You’re free.
Sam, Juan and the rest of the gang were at the corner.
They smothered him like he’d hit a bottom­of­the­ninth­
homer and lifted him up on their shoulders. 9
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Years later, in the control tower at San Francisco
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International Airport, Tim pushes tin. A smile reflects
lives on the screen of his monitor as he maneuvers two
777s within a whisker of each other. The artful dodger.
 Townsend Walker
lives in San Francisco.
Had a career in finance.
Published three books: on
foreign exchange, on derivatives,
and the last one on portfolio
management. His stories have
been published in over two
dozen journals, on-line and
print.
twalker@aperimus.com
 Some people are
so easily shuffled in
doubt.
­Spoon

see also: Thirst For Fire