Jaws

“Trouble, Mr. Middleton. We are in big trouble.”

“In retrospect, Chief, how do you feel about having opened the beaches today?”

“How do I feel? What kind of question is that? Angry, annoyed, confused. Thankful that nobody got hurt. Is that enough?”

“That’s just fine, Chief,” Middleton said with a smile. “Thank you, Chief Brody.” He paused, then said, “Okay, Walter, that’ll wrap it. Let’s get home and start editing this mess.”

“What about a close?” said the cameraman. “I’ve got about twenty-five feet left.”

“Okay,” said Middleton. “Wait’ll I think of something profound to say.”

Brody gathered up his towel and his beach bag and walked over the dune toward his car. When he got to Scotch Road, he saw the family from Queens standing beside their camper.

“Was that the shark that killed the people?” asked the father.

“Who knows?” said Brody. “What’s the difference?”

“Didn’t look like much to me, just a fin. The boys was kind of disappointed.”

“Listen you jerk,” Brody said. “A boy almost got killed just now. Are you disappointed that didn’t happen?”

“Don’t give me that,” said the man. “That thing wasn’t even close to him. I bet the whole thing was a put-on for them TV guys.”

“Mister, get out of here. You and your whole goddam brood. Get ’em out of here. Now!”

Brody waited while the man loaded his family and their gear into the camper. As he walked away, he heard the man say to his wife, “I figured all the people would be snot-noses out here. I was right. Even the cops.”

At six o’clock, Brody sat in his office with Hooper and Meadows. He had already talked to Larry Vaughan, who called — drunk and in tears — and muttered wildly about the ruination of his life. The buzzer on Brody’s desk rang, and he picked up the phone.

“Fellow named Bill Whitman to see you, Chief,” said Bixby. “Says he’s from the New York Times.”

“Oh, for… Okay, what the hell. Send him in.”

The door opened, and Whitman stood in the doorway. He said, “Am I interrupting something?”

“Nothing much,” said Brody. “Come on in. You remember Harry Meadows. This is Matt Hooper, from Woods Hole.”

“I remember Harry Meadows, all right,” said Whitman. “It was thanks to him that I got my ass chewed from one end of Forty-third Street to the other by my boss.”

“Why was that?” said Brody.

“Mr. Meadows conveniently forgot to tell me about the attack on Christine Watkins. But he didn’t forget to tell his readers.”

“Must have slipped my mind,” said Meadows.

“What can we do for you?” said Brody.

“I was wondering,” said Whitman, “if you’re sure this is the same fish that killed the others.”

Brody gestured toward Hooper, who said, “I can’t be positive. I never saw the fish that killed the others, and I didn’t really get a look at the one today. All I saw was a flash, sort of silvery gray. I know what it was, but I couldn’t compare it to anything else. All I have to go on is probability, and in all probability it’s the same fish. It’s too far-fetched — for me, anyway — to believe that there are two big man-eating sharks off southern Long Island at the same time.”

Whitman said to Brody, “What are you going to do, Chief’? I mean, beyond closing the beaches, which I gather has already been done.”

“I don’t know. What can we do? Christ, I’d rather have a hurricane. Or even an earthquake. At least after they happen, they’re over and done with. You can look around and see what’s been done and what has to be done. They’re events, something you can handle. They have beginnings and ends. This is crazy. It’s as if there was a maniac running around loose, killing people whenever he felt like it. You know who he is, but you can’t catch him and you can’t stop him. And what makes it worse, you don’t know why he’s doing it.”

Meadows said, “Remember Minnie Eldridge.”

“Yeah,” said Brody. “I’m beginning to think she may have something, after all.”

“Who’s that?” said Whitman.

“Nobody. Just some nut.”

For a moment there was silence, an exhausted silence, as if everything that needed to be said had been said. Then Whitman said, “Well?”

“Well what?” said Brody.

“There must be someplace to go from here, something to do.”

“I’d be happy to hear any suggestions. Personally, I think we’re fucked. We’re going to be lucky if there’s a town left after this summer.”

“Isn’t that a bit of an exaggeration?”

“I don’t think so. Do you, Harry?”

“Not really,” said Meadows. “The town survives on its summer people, Mr. Whitman. Call it parasitic, if you will, but that’s the way it is. The host animal comes every summer, and Amity feeds on it furiously, pulling every bit of sustenance it can before the host leaves again after Labor Day. Take away the host animal, and we’re like dog ticks with no dog to feed on. We starve. At the least — the very least — next winter is going to be the worst in the history of this town. We’re going to have so many people on the dole that Amity will look like Harlem.” He chuckled. “Harlem-by-the-Sea.”

“What I’d give my ass to know,” said Brody, “is why us? Why Amity? Why not East Hampton or Southampton or Quogue?”

“That,” said Hooper, “is something we’ll never know.”

“Why?” said Whitman.

“I don’t want to sound like I’m making excuses for misjudging that fish,” said Hooper, “but the line between the natural and the preternatural is very cloudy. Natural things occur, and for most of them there’s a logical explanation. But for a whole lot of things there’s just no good or sensible answer. Say two people are swimming, one in front of the other, and a shark comes up from behind, passes right beside the guy in the rear, and attacks the guy in front. Why? Maybe they smelled different. Maybe the one in front was swimming in a more provocative way. Say the guy in back, the one who wasn’t attacked, goes to help the one who was attacked. The shark may not touch him — may actually avoid him — while he keeps banging away at the guy he did hit. White sharks are supposed to prefer colder water. So why does one turn up off the coast of Mexico, strangled by a human corpse that he couldn’t quite swallow? In a way, sharks are like tornadoes. They touch down here, but not there. They wipe out this house but suddenly veer away and miss the house next door. The guy in the house that’s wiped out says, ‘Why me?’ The guy in the house that’s missed says, ‘Thank God.’”

“All right,” said Whitman. “But what I still don’t get is why the shark can’t be caught.”

“Maybe it can be,” said Hooper. “But I don’t think by us. At least not with the equipment we have here. I suppose we could try chumming again.”

“Yeah,” said Brody. “Ben Gardner can tell us all about chumming.”

“Do you know anything about some fellow named Quint?” said Whitman.

“I’ve heard the name,” Brody said. “Did you ever look into the guy, Harry?”

“I read what little there was. As far as I know, he’s never done anything illegal.”

“Well,” said Brody, “maybe it’s worth a call.”

“You’re joking,” said Hooper. “You’d really do business with this guy?”

“I’ll tell you what, Hooper. At this point, if someone came in here and said he was Superman and he could piss that shark away from here, I’d say fine and dandy. I’d even hold his dick for him.”

“Yeah, but…”

Brody cut him off. “What do you say, Harry? You think he’s in the phone book?”

“You really are serious,” said Hooper.

“You bet your sweet ass. You got any better ideas?”

“No, it’s just… I don’t know. How do we know the guy isn’t a phony or a drunk or something?”

“We’ll never know till we try.” Brody took a phone book from the top drawer of his desk and opened it to the