The Choptank Meteor

This story is fictitious. It is based entirely on the author’s observations of the indigenous people and their curious mores, folkways and goings on in an anonymous small town that the author made while driving past said town at 75 miles an hour on my way to the beach.

The Choptank River, on the eastern shore of Maryland, flows into the Chesapeake Bay after having been fed by various creeks, rills, rivulets, and open sewers. Near the Chesapeake Bay, the water is salty. Further upriver, it’s 100% marsh gas. It’s cut in several places by roads and a highway that transports cosmopolitan Washingtonians from 50 or so miles to the west to the beaches of Maryland, Delaware and Virginia, 50 or so miles to the east. Various settlements, unknown or forgotten to all but those who are unfortunate enough to live there or are unfortunate enough to run out of gas there, dot the area. One of them was Postum, MD.
Nora Flanigan was a cat lady. Seventy years of age, her primary occupation was attending church with other Bible beaters, maintain a flock of 150 cats; burying the dead in the back of her lot and promptly replacing them.

John Doakum was a well known local inebriate and neer do well. Doakum drove a rusted green Impala.

Dickey Slade was one of the pack of dirty local urchins, spending his afternoons and weekends shoplifting or writing graffiti.

The main architectural feature of the town was a pair of bridges over the river. One, of newer concrete construction, connected the 4 lane highway that carried beachgoers who whipped past at speeds upward of 75mph. The second, 100 yards upriver, and lower to the water, was an older wooden planked, pylon-supported affair. This stretch was given over to the local racing scene at night. On the more populous and older west side were two bars, a piercing salon, a duck decoy seller, an Arby’s and a Burger King. These establishments on the main drag leading to the bridge were surrounded by trailers scattered alongside narrow crumbling concrete streets with marsh grass poking through.

On the other, eastern side of the span could be found three bars, one tattoo parlor, a shrink wrapping boat storage establishment, and a Kentucky Fried Chicken. Doakum, a west side man, often spent his evening at the east side bars (you don’t shit where you eat, his pappy always said), and would return early in the morning, inebriated, crossing the old bridge in his Impala often pinballing between the retaining walls. One night, he surprised young Slade mid-bridge, fishing illegally from a pylon. Slade felt compelled to leave the bridge for the safety of the water 15 feet below, losing bait and tackle and a good deal of his pride. He decided then and there to get even.

On the following afternoon, Flanigan had taken up her post on the docks, in the shade of the old wooden bridge, proselytizing various crabbers and boaters returning from their day on the river. She had taken up a familiar theme – “signs and divinations,” the central conceit of which was her assertion that comets and meteors flashing across the sky were heavenly signs to sinners to abandon their wicked ways before they were punished by real heavenly fire. This multi-hour rant was met with the usual collective “whatever.” The good and simple denizens of Postum accepted her for what she was and saw no reason to antagonize her, preferring to look down and sigh instead of speaking their minds. This was not an inhibition Doakum shared: “no one gives a shit about all your ‘comets of the lord’ crap, you old coot” he muttered as he passed her with a bucket of chicken necks.

Slade came and went throughout the afternoon, looking surreptitiously for unattended items he could make off with. Like many children of his age and generation, he thought older people to be naturallycrazy and paid no attention to Flanigan at all, nor she to him.

Evening had fallen. Doakum’s business on the docks finished, he passed through one last time. Flanigan called after him to “get the risen Lord into your life!” “Fuck that!” Doakum yelled back. It was time to set off for the bars. Slade was in his foster parents’ trailer, finishing dinner.

Hours passed. Outside the bar, in which a fight involving Doakum was already in progress, Slade reached down below the undercarriage of Doakum’s Impala with a screwdriver and got busy poking holes. He heard the satisfying splashing of fluids and managed to loosen and crack two of the brackets that held up the Impala’s exhaust. Then he slipped off into the night to huff paint.

When Doakum was kicked out of the bar for good at 4:30 am, he got in his car to make the trip over the narrow span back to his trailer in the marsh grass. He was in no condition to smell the gas fumes, and certainly not to notice that part of his chassis was resting on the ground. He was at first only dimly aware of the scraping and the sparks, but the subsequent ball of flame succeeded in capturing his attention. The sparks had ignited the rear end. Doakum considered stopping, but didn’t - after all, where could he pull off? And then what? It wouldn’t do to be found highly intoxicated next to a flaming car in the middle of the bridge. Doakum reasoned he needed to drive faster to outrun the flames.

After a 4 hour nap in her car, Flanigan was just then returning to her post. She had decided to get an early start – she planted her swollen feet firmly on the docks below the bridge in the predawn darkness. Cat in one hand, bible in the other, she cleared her throat to start talking Jesus when she looked up to see the flaming Chevy careening across the sky, and she dropped dead on the spot. Her last words: “signs and divinations!” Best thing for her, really. Doakum still drives the Impala, its back end blackened but not really looking that much worse. You can’t fall out of a ditch, his pappy used to say.

The other 149 cats all died of starvation and by the time the public works department got around to clean it up it was impossible. The fire department burned the place down as a training exercise. Then it was bulldozed. Nothing grows there, it just smells like a bunch of burned dead cats. Locals call it Dead Cat Field. Slade goes over there to break bottles every now and then.