7. Agent 107: A Final Report (February 2013)
Agent 107, who went under the alias of Frank von Peck (also Frank N. Peck), escaped from the clutches of this mortal realm on January 6, 2013. He was aged 47 sun orbits. Please allow me some words of obituarial hagiography. A big ‘Thank You’ in advance.
Mr. Peck always wanted the most physically and psychically daring assignments. Throw in some feminine intrigue, and he was there, first in line, looking fine, and now where do I sign?
High adventure was his forte. And, he cleaned it off his plate in short order with an artful swoop. Always prepared, heck, always prepping for the next great adventure, often on a motorized two-wheeler.
He could keep things under his vest, unlike yours truly. Thus, the ringleader, Ernie Earwig, allowed him to join psecret psociety under the radar without being on Facebook. (The only variance ever granted, I do believe.) When asked, he would deny being an agent. He was that secretive. And, smartly so.
In the early years (‘79 - ‘82), he roamed around east Charlotte in a self-customized brown 1975 Comet that had about 20 plastic green army men glued to the hood. It was a hit at stoplights on Albemarle Road. He later turned the wiper’s nozzles outward and put red dye in the wiper washer fluid’s reservoir. You can imagine what he then did when in the center lane.
But, these were just a couple of the teenage pranks that would presage other matters of real heft and import down the road. And, his road had plenty of jumps on it. Ups and downs. Many miraculous recoveries and ingenious evasions.
His off-road phase on the old mining and logging roads of southern West Virginia were where he left us some clues on how to ride in high style. How to nimbly cross a swollen creek without becoming a nimrod. How to get the adrenaline flowing without blowing a gasket. How to beat that train through the tunnel … or over that narrow trestle!
All of the thousands of miles of his travels. The tales from the trails. Well, it’s still back there … invisibly somewhere. Like your life, too, the past, the memories … a story now in the clouds, passing by … forever it would seem. Yeah, let’s get lost and float away!
And, our Frank could read the clouds. He said that you could see the history of the world in them. One day you might see the history of the Roman Empire pass by. Such graphic scenes.
And graveyards. Wow! He could tell which of the deceased were at peace, and which were tormented restive spirits. He really didn’t want me to document any of this. Whatever you do, don’t retell any of this. He said that to me. Many times. But, I think he would be ok with it now in his tranquil inurnment.
There was a time in a van – maybe it was mine or my brother’s – when he told us about things that were happening, and getting ready to happen, several miles away from where we were parked. Astounding prescience. Always a step ahead.
And then, a night in some frozen red-clay ditch. Oh, yeah, we had run off the road somehow. An unknown person in a nondescript car drives by.
“We’ve got to get out of here now!” I yelled on that cold January night in eastern Mecklenburg County.
“Why?” Frank asked rhetorically. “That wasn’t a cop.”
“Are you sure, man?” I asked with some trepidation.
“I’m always sure, dude,” Frank announced most assuredly.
I then rocked the van back and forth, shifting the transmission lever from D to R and back again. Suddenly, the van’s rear wheels grabbed the pavement and we were free from the mud trap. Freed from a low spot, physically and psychologically. Another sigh of relief.
But, that damn car made a U-turn. He or she followed us. Crap! Futher-mucker! [sic] This aint gonna end good.
Frank barked out the driving orders. “Don’t look back; don’t turn your head around; just look straight ahead.”
I did as he advised. The trailing car turned left onto a side road and disappeared.
“Ah, they missed their turn, that’s all,” I said. “Whew!”
“Where are they going?” Frank asked with a curious look.
“Home, I suppose.”
“That wasn’t a driveway.”
I thought about that for a second. He was right. It just led to a party spot in a clearing (an illegal dumping area).
“Well, let’s not follow them.”
“You know, we were all doing this under different faces and names centuries ago. The appearances change, but it all gets recycled. Over and over.” Frank wasn’t joking.
“You’re sure about that, sport?”
“Yes, in so many words. In so many worlds.”
“You’re a real sayer [sic] of sooths, Frank.”
“Would you rather I be a slayer of sleuths?”
Sometimes, I would just say something like … “Well, you know ...” and he would quickly pounce and close the open sentence.
“Well, you know …”
“The wheel is worn and you need a new face.”
“Very funny, Frank. Very, very fawking [sic] funny.”
He liked to keep things in order to be free to move … chaotically, yet on target, it often seemed. Mega-mobility. Always moving towards the next great event with the previous one in tow. Tethered to a loose-fitting mind, who knows what one may find?
He made us think about life on Earth in this human form. What is the real goal? Are you happy now? Will you really be happy there and then? When you get to the next level of this or that will you just crave the one above? Does it ever end? Destinationitis, [sic] I think he called it. The curse of this modern age.
And, he told me in so many non-words not to fall into this trap. Live today. Live in the now. Live while reading this. You don’t have to be a hedonist. Just stop the constant discounting of the present.
Well, no, he did not directly say these things, but they were certainly implied. These nonliterary notes help me. They were all over his desk. These tokens of those times.
Ah, I knew he liked the new girl. That shark grin. I saw it first in Florida. Clearwater. Epik [sic] with a k. No problem with the ladies. I took mental notes, but could never match his sly, understated technique.
I wanted to go to Amsterdam with him, but our schedules never would allow it. I wanted to see him smoking weed freely and openly in a Dutch coffeehouse (as opposed to behind a dumpster in Monroe, NC). Oh, well. Maybe when I go back to the ‘dam, I’ll leave copies of this obtuse obit (this meandering thing you are reading now) here and there along the canals. Perhaps a stoned ex-pat will recognize a reference point.
Yeah, we used to kick back on the Kuck back road and burn a phattie [sic] and listen to some Frank Zappa. A real über-duper in Mint Hill. The Independence High School daze.
Then add some Marezine mind motion madness in east Charlotte. Dropping miscellaneous items in the old Regency Theater on Albemarle Road. (Oh, they razed it some time back.) His pocket watch, it stopped at the same time the movie ended. Well, he claimed such. It was An American Werewolf in London. I wasn’t there for that one, but I got several congruent reports.
Oh, we were at Morrow Mountain once. Well, actually numerous times. But, the most momentous occasion was, uh, I think it was on March 9, 1983. [This day would later be the basis of the novella To Morrow Tomorrow.] A Wednesday. It was a nice spring-like day with a cool start.
There’s a little creek next to the Kron House parking lot. We were hopping from boulder to stone up the creek. Somehow we never lost our footing, and never hit a wobbly rock. We were having a conversation as we sauntered along. It was like a fluvial philosophy lesson. The situation was fabulously fluid. Did I really type that? Such idiocy.
First it came downstream. It, the big thought flotilla, started flowing all about. But then, we hit a Y … and it was like a recursive trap. You can read this either way. In the leaves. Or, on the stones. Even when the creek turned to clear Jello, we just kept moving. Advancing the plot. Picking at the ploy. Well, you get the jist: We was a-baked like Bundt marble cakes.
By some magi-chance, [sic] we arrived at a green lagoon. THE Green Lagoon! Not really a lagoon, though; just a small pond in the middle of the woods. It had a short pier going to the overflow drain. Frank stomped on it really hard. You could hear the innards of the Earth reverberating up through that overflow pipe. I can hear it now. We peered down the hole. We saw ourselves with hawks flying overhead. Circling. Life is a fight for survival every second for most creatures. We thought this in so many ways. For so many minutes. For so many millennia it seemed.
All earthly animals considered, we were glad to be human on that day. We went back to his red F-100 pickup truck. We were thirsty. He had a 2-liter bottle of Shasta strawberry soda. The shadows were magical. In fact and/or knotted fiction (he claimed that fiction if unraveled properly reveals fact), we went on to call it ‘The Magical.’ It was mesmerizing to look at those shadows on the hood of his truck.
I really thought that he would be around for the 30th anniversary of that psyche-venture. I feel robbed somehow. He got my goat, put it on a boat, and set it afloat in a fathomless moat. Now, where’s my coat?
Over Narrows dam, the story went wide. Way wide of the mark. How can we go back to these places without the present-day annoyances? Man, I want to dive into that cosmic stream. And drown.
Well, Mr. Peck beat me to it. I wasn’t going to win that race. That trace … lingers.
Now, I just wait for a signal. Maybe a whisper in the late afternoon wind. Or, just maybe something that he wrote, though he didn’t write so much. Not much of a scribe.
I forced myself to go back to Morrow Mountain to check for a memento that he may have left behind. I walked to the Kron House graveyard (in the woods behind the old 19th century house). I looked at the family headstones. Sentries for centuries. It was the thought that came into my mind. I spotted a curious slab of marble. I turned it over; it read:
I got a walk that can’t stand still. – Frank von Peck
It appeared to have been scratched with a penknife. I remembered it. I stood there for a while. Then I sat down. And, the gray clouds were hanging anxiously, beginning to chide me.
Then there was a gust of wind that rustled some fallen leaves. One stuck to the stone. When I removed it, there was no writing/etching on it. Gone. It is all here … somewhere … did you hear? … somewhere … it is all here … [the audio track kept looping]
Ok, back to the green ‘lagoon’ before I close this mind tap off. It seems that they emptied it a decade ago. Gone a muck, gone amok. And, yes, the mystery escaped back into the boggy earth. Or, did it evaporate into the clouds? Probably the latter, and bring your tallest ladder.
Oh, but it’s been refilled now. Plenty of new water for new thoughts. Plenty of pensive ponding to be had. It’s worth the trek on a gray day. Take a new path. And please don’t litter (one of Frank’s pet peeves).
And, there was that day, floating in the clouds, reflecting on Lake Tillery. And, well, maybe it’s still there … somewhere. But, really, it all feels so postmortem now. The game has already been played. The adventures have been done. The highs have been reached. And, Frank had no plans for sitting on a rocking chair in his 70s – or even in his 60s – on some plateau chirping out platitudes. Or, did he?
Hmmmm … I guess that I could have seen him in his early 50s still exhaling a cloud of smoke. “Dude, hit this quick!” But, no, I guess not.
Well, the well was deep. We fell into it. Down we went into that hidden rabbit hole. So much adventure. Gosh, we had more fun than could’ve been imagined. How did we get away with all of that? Who do we owe?
I have often wondered if Frank had some sixth sense of impending danger. He was just about always eluding the buzz-killers. Often high, but always keen. Never sloppy or lazy.
And, lastly, boy did he have a good mechanical feel. He could always get the down vehicle or vessel up and running when things looked mighty grim. The setting sun never panicked him. “Pass me that wrench, man. No, the other one, sportbreath.” And, very soon we were in motion again as darkness gave chase.
Just then, when I looked down, a sense of ‘goneness’. But the processes go on. No one person’s death stops the sun from coming up in the east. Yet, the sunset seemed to be STOP sign red on this chilly February evening. And the wind … man, I tell you it was whispering non-random syllables. And that shooting star … meteoric, dude! 107 light-years out.
We’re Peckless now. He was peerless. I’m not tearless.