Jaws

by Peter Benchley

  “Why?”

  “He’s a very rich man. No matter how long this shark thing goes on, he won’t be badly hurt. Sure, he’ll lose a little dough, but he’s taking all this as if it was life and death—and I don’t mean just the town’s. His.”

  “Maybe he’s just a conscientious fellow.”

  “That wasn’t conscience talking on the phone just then. Believe me, Harry. I know what conscience is.”

  Ten miles south of the eastern tip of Long Island, a chartered fishing boat drifted slowly in the tide. Two wire lines trailed limply aft in an oily slick. The captain of the boat, a tall, spare man, sat on a bench on the flying bridge, staring at the water. Below, in the cockpit, the two men who had chartered the boat sat reading. One was reading a novel, the other the New York Times.

  “Hey, Quint,” said the man with the newspaper, “did you see this about the shark that killed those people?”

  “I seen it,” said the captain.

  “You think we’ll run into that shark?”

  “Nope.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know.”

  “Suppose we went looking for him.”

  “We won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “We got a slick goin’. We’ll stay put.”

  The man shook his head and smiled. “Boy, wouldn’t that be some sport.”

  “Fish like that ain’t sport,” said the captain.

  “How far is Amity from here?”

  “Down the coast a ways.”

  “Well, if he’s around here somewhere, you might run into him one of these days.”

  “We’ll find one another, all right. But not today.”

  5

  Thursday morning was foggy—a wet ground fog so thick that it had a taste: sharp and salty. People drove under the speed limit, with their lights on. Around midday, the fog lifted, and puffy cumulus clouds meandered across the sky beneath a high blanket of cirrus. By five in the afternoon, the cloud cover had begun to disintegrate, like pieces fallen from a jigsaw puzzle. Sunlight streaked through the gaps, stabbing shining patches of blue onto the gray-green surface of the sea.

  Brody sat on the public beach, his elbow resting on his knees to steady the binoculars in his hands. When he lowered the glasses, he could barely see the boat—a white speck that disappeared and reappeared in the ocean swells. The strong lenses drew it into plain, though jiggly, view. Brody had been sitting there for nearly an hour. He tried to push his eyes, to extend his vision from within to delineate more clearly the outline of what he saw. He cursed and let the glasses drop and hang by the strap around his neck.

  “Hey, Chief,” Hendricks said, walking up to Brody.

  “Hey, Leonard. What are you doing here?”

  “I was just passing by and I saw your car. What are you doing?”

  “Trying to figure out what the hell Ben Gardner’s doing.”

  “Fishing, don’t you think?”

  “That’s what he’s being paid to do, but it’s the damnedest fishing I ever saw. I’ve been here an hour, and I haven’t seen anything move on that boat.”

  “Can I take a look?” Brody handed him the glasses. Hendricks raised them and looked out at sea. “Nope, you’re right. How long has he been out there?”

  “All day, I think. I talked to him last night, and he said he’d be taking off at six this morning.”

  “Did he go alone?”

  “I don’t know. He said he was going to try to get hold of his mate—Danny what’s-his-name—but there was something about a dentist appointment. I hope to hell he didn’t go alone.”

  “You want to go see? We’ve got at least two more hours of daylight.”

  “How do you plan to get out there?”

  “I’ll borrow Chickering’s boat. He’s got an AquaSport with an eighty-horse Evinrude on it. That’ll get us out there.”

  Brody felt a shimmy of fear skitter up his back. He was a very poor swimmer, and the prospect of being on top of—let alone in—water above his head gave him what his mother used to call the wimwams: sweaty palms, a persistent need to swallow, and an ache in his stomach—essentially the sensation some people feel about flying. In Brody’s dreams, deep water was populated by slimy, savage things that rose from below and shredded his flesh, by demons that cackled and moaned. “Okay,” he said. “I don’t guess we’ve got much choice. Maybe by the time we get to the dock he’ll already have started in. You go get the boat ready. I’ll stop off at headquarters and give his wife a call … see if he’s called in on the radio.”

  Amity’s town dock was small, with only twenty slips, a fuel dock, and a wooden shack where hot dogs and fried clams were sold in cardboard sleeves. The slips were in a little inlet protected from the open sea by a stone jetty that ran across half the width of the inlet’s mouth. Hendricks was standing in the AquaSport, the engine running, and he was chatting with a man in a twenty-five-foot cabin cruiser tied up in the neighboring slip. Brody walked along the wooden pier and climbed down the short ladder into the boat.

  “What did she say?” asked Hendricks.

  “Not a word. She’s been trying to raise him for half an hour, but she figures he must have turned off the radio.”

  “Is he alone?”

  “As far as she knows. His mate had an impacted wisdom tooth that had to be taken out today.”

  The man in the cabin cruiser said, “If you don’t mind my saying so, that’s pretty strange.”

  “What is?” said Brody.

  “To turn off your radio when you’re out alone. People don’t do that.”

  “I don’t know. Ben always bitches about all the chatter that goes on between boats when he’s out fishing. Maybe he got bored and turned it off.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Let’s go, Leonard,” said Brody. “Do you know how to drive this thing?”

  Hendricks cast off the bow line, walked to the stern, un-cleated the stern line, and tossed it onto the deck. He moved to the control console and pushed a knobbed handle forward. The boat lurched ahead, chugging. Hendricks pushed the handle farther forward, and the engine fired more regularly. The stern settled back, the bow rose. As they made the turn around the jetty, Hendricks pushed the lever all the way forward, and the bow dropped down.

  “Planing,” said Hendricks.

  Brody grabbed a steel handle on the side of the console. “Are there any life jackets?” he asked.

  “Just the cushions,” said Hendricks. “They’d hold you up all right, if you were an eight-year-old boy.”

  “Thanks.”

  What breeze there had been had died, and there was little chop to the sea. But there were small swells, and the boat took them roughly, smacking its prow into each one, recovering with a shudder that unnerved Brody. “This thing’s gonna break apart if you don’t slow down,” he said.

  Hendricks smiled, relishing his moment of command. “No worry, Chief. If I slow down, we’ll wallow. It’ll take us a week to get out there, and your stomach will feel like it’s full of squirrels.”

  Gardner’s boat was about three quarters of a mile from shore. As they drew nearer, Brody could see it bobbing gently in the swells. He could even make out the black letters on the transom: FLICKA.

  “He’s anchored,” said Hendricks. “Boy, that’s some lot of water to anchor a boat in. We must have more than a hundred feet out here.”

  “Swell,” Brody said. “That’s just what I wanted to hear.”

  When they were about fifty yards from the Flicka, Hendricks throttled down, and the boat settled into a slow side-to-side roll. They closed quickly. Brody walked forward and mounted a platform in the bow. He saw no signs of life. There were no rods in the rod-holders. “Hey, Ben!” he called. There was no reply.

  “Maybe he’s below,” said Hendricks.

  Brody called again, “Hey, Ben!” The bow of the AquaSport was only a few feet from the port quarter of the Flicka. Hendricks pushed the handle into neutral, then gave it a quic
k burst of reverse. The AquaSport stopped and, on the next swell, nestled up against the Flicka’s gunwale. Brody grabbed the gunwale. “Hey, Ben!”

  Hendricks took a line from the lazaret, walked forward, and made it fast to a cleat on the bow of the AquaSport. He looped the line over the railing of the other boat and tied a crude knot. “You want to go on board?” he said.

  “Yeah.” Brody climbed aboard the Flicka. Hendricks followed, and they stood in the cockpit. Hendricks poked his head through the forward hatch. “You in there, Ben?” He looked around, withdrew his head, and said, “Not there.”

  “He’s not on board,” said Brody. “No two ways about it.”

  “What’s that stuff?” said Hendricks, pointing to a bucket in the corner of the stern.

  Brody walked to the bucket and bent down. A stench of fish and oil filled his nose. The bucket was full of guts and blood. “Must be chum,” he said. “Fish guts and other shit. You spread it around in the water and it’s supposed to attract sharks. He didn’t use much of it. The bucket’s almost full.”

  A sudden noise made Brody jump. “Whiskey, zebra, echo, two, five, niner,” said a voice crackling over the radio. “This is the Pretty Belle. You there, Jake?”

  “So much for that theory,” said Brody. “He never turned off his radio.”

  “I don’t get it, Chief. There are no rods. He didn’t carry a dinghy, so he couldn’t have rowed away. He swam like a fish, so if he fell overboard he would’ve just climbed back on.

  “You see a harpoon anywhere?”

  “What’s it look like?”

  “I don’t know. Like a harpoon. And barrels. Supposedly, you use them as floats.”

  “I don’t see anything like that.”

  Brody stood at the starboard gunwale, gazing into the middle distance. The boat moved slightly, and he steadied himself with his right hand. He felt something strange and looked down. There were four ragged screw holes where a cleat had been. The screws had obviously not been removed by a screwdriver; the wood around the holes was torn. “Look at this, Leonard.”

  Hendricks ran his hand over the holes. He looked to the port side, where a ten-inch steel cleat still sat securely on the wood. “You imagine that what was here was as big as the one over there?” he said. “Jesus, what would it take to pull that mother out?”

  “Look here, Leonard.” Brody ran his index finger over the outer edge of the gunwale. There was a scar about eight inches long, where the paint had been scraped away and the wood abraded. “It looks like someone took a file to this wood.”

  “Or else rubbed the hell out of it with an awful tight piece of heavy rope.”

  Brody walked over to the port side of the cockpit and, aimlessly, began to feel his way along the outer edge of the gunwale. “That’s the only place,” he said. When he reached the stern, he leaned on the gunwale and gazed down into the water.

  For a moment, he stared dumbly at the transom, unseeing. Then a pattern began to take shape, a pattern of holes, deep gouges in the wooden transom, forming a rough semicircle more than three feet across. Next to it was another, similar pattern. And at the bottom of the transom, just at the water line, three short smears of blood. Please, God, thought Brody, not another one. “Come here, Leonard,” he said.

  Hendricks walked to the stern and looked over. “What?”

  “If I hold your legs, you think you can lean over and take a look at those holes down there and try to figure out what made them?”

  “What do you think made them?”

  “I don’t know. But something. I want to find out what. Come on. If you can’t dope it out in a minute or two, we’ll forget about it and go home. Okay?”

  “I guess so.” Hendricks lay on the top of the transom. “Hold me tight, Chief … please.”

  Brody leaned down and grabbed Hendricks’ feet. “Don’t worry,” he said. He took one of Hendricks’ legs under each arm and lifted. Hendricks rose, then bent over the transom. “Okay?” said Brody.

  “A little more. Not too much! Jesus, you just dipped my head in the water.”

  “Sorry. How’s that?”

  “Okay, that’s it.” Hendricks began to examine the holes. “What if some shark came along right now?” he grunted. “He could grab me right out of your hands.”

  “Don’t think about it. Just look.”

  “I’m looking.” In a few moments he said, “Sonofabitch. Look at that thing. Hey, pull me up. I need my knife.”

  “What is it?” Brody asked when Hendricks was back aboard.

  Hendricks unfolded the main blade from the body of his pocket knife. “I don’t know,” he replied. “Some kind of white chip or something, stuck into one of the holes.” Knife in hand, he allowed Brody to lower him over the rail again. He worked briefly, his body twisting from the effort. Then he called: “Okay. I’ve got it. Pull.”

  Brody stepped backward, hoisting Hendricks over the transom, then lowered Hendricks’ feet to the deck. “Let’s see,” he said, holding out his hand. Into Brody’s palm Hendricks dropped a triangle of glistening white denticle. It was nearly two inches long. The sides were tiny saws. Brody scraped the tooth against the gunwale, and it cut the wood. He looked out over the water and shook his head. “My God,” he said.

  “It’s a tooth, isn’t it?” said Hendricks. “Jesus Christ Almighty. You think the shark got Ben?”

  “I don’t know what else to think,” said Brody. He looked at the tooth again, then dropped it into his pocket. “We might as well go. There’s nothing we can do here.”

  “What do you want to do with Ben’s boat?”

  “We’ll leave it here till tomorrow. Then we’ll have someone come get it.”

  “I’ll drive it back if you want.”

  “And leave me to drive the other one? Forget it.”

  “We could tow one of them in.”

  “No. It’s getting dark, and I don’t want to have to fool around trying to dock two boats in the dark. This boat’ll be all right overnight. Just go check the anchor up front and make sure it’s secure. Then let’s go. No one’s going to need this boat before tomorrow … especially not Ben Gardner.”

  They arrived at the dock in late twilight. Harry Meadows and another man, unknown to Brody, were waiting for them. “You sure have good antenna, Harry,” Brody said as he climbed the ladder onto the dock.

  Meadows smiled, flattered. “That’s my trade, Martin.” He gestured toward the man beside him. “This is Matt Hooper, Chief Brody.”

  The two men shook hands. “You’re the fellow from Woods Hole,” Brody said, trying to get a good look at him in the fading light. He was young—mid-twenties, Brody thought—and handsome: tanned, hair bleached by the sun. He was about as tall as Brody, an inch over six feet, but leaner: Brody guessed 170 pounds, compared to his own 200. A mental reflex scanned Hooper for possible threat. Then, with what Brody recognized as juvenile pride, he determined that if it ever came to a face-off, he could take Hooper. Experience would make the difference.

  “That’s right,” said Hooper.

  “Harry’s been tapping your brain long-distance,” Brody said. “How come you’re here?”

  Meadows said, “I called him. I thought he might be able to figure out what’s going on.”

  “Shit, Harry, all you had to do was ask me,” said Brody. “I could have told you. You see, there’s this fish out there, and …”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Brody sensed his own resentment at the intrusion, the complication that Hooper’s expertise was bound to add, the implicit division of authority that Hooper’s arrival had created. And he recognized the resentment as stupid. “Sure, Harry,” he said. “No problem. It’s just been a long day.”

  “What did you find out there?” Meadows asked.

  Brody started to reach in his pocket for the tooth, but he stopped. He didn’t want to go through it all, standing on a dock in near darkness. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Come on back to the station and I’ll fill
you in.”

  “Is Ben going to stay out there all night?”

  “It looks that way, Harry.” Brody turned to Hendricks, who had finished tying up the boat. “You going home, Leonard?”

  “Yeah. I want to clean up before I go to work.”

  Brody arrived at police headquarters before Meadows and Hooper. It was almost eight o’clock. He had two phone calls to make—to Ellen, to see if the dinner leftovers could be reheated or if he should pick up something on the way home, and, the call he dreaded, to Sally Gardner. He called Ellen first: pot roast. It could be reheated. It might taste like a sneaker, but it would be warm. He hung up, checked the phone book for the Gardner number, and dialed it.

  “Sally? This is Martin Brody.” Suddenly he regretted having called without thinking the call through. How much should he tell her? Not much, he decided, at least not until he had had a chance to check with Hooper to see if his theory was plausible or absurd.

  “Where’s Ben, Martin?” The voice was calm, but pitched slightly higher than Brody remembered as normal.

  “I don’t know, Sally.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? You went out there, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. He wasn’t on the boat.”

  “But the boat was there.”

  “The boat was there.”

  “You went on board? You looked all over it? Even below?”

  “Yes.” Then a tiny hope. “Ben didn’t carry a dinghy, did he?”

  “No. How could he not be there?” The voice was shriller now.

  “I …”

  “Where is he?”

  Brody caught the tone of incipient hysteria. He wished he had gone to the house in person. “Are you alone, Sally?”

  “No. The kids are here.”

  She seemed calmer, but Brody was sure the calm was a lull before the burst of grief that would come when she realized that the fears with which she had lived every day for the sixteen years Ben had been fishing professionally—closet fears shoved into mental recesses and never uttered because they would seem ridiculous—had come true.

  Brody dug at his memory for the ages of the Gardner children. Twelve, maybe; then nine, then about six. What kind of kid was the twelve-year-old? He didn’t know. Who was the nearest neighbor? Shit. Why didn’t he think of this before? The Finleys. “Just a second, Sally.” He called to the officer at the front desk. “Clements, call Grace Finley and tell her to get her ass over to Sally Gardner’s house right now.”