Jaws

forced to pay cash. By the end of October, the Felix Brothers were unable to function as a business, and they moved away.

Generally, Brody’s contribution to the Amity understanding — in addition to maintaining the rule of law and sound judgment in the town — consisted of suppressing rumors and, in consultation with Harry Meadows, the editor of the Amity Leader, keeping a certain perspective on the rare unfortunate occurrences that qualified as news.

The previous summer’s rapes had been reported in the Leader, but just barely (as molestations), because Brody and Meadows agreed that the specter of a black rapist stalking every female in Amity wouldn’t do much for the tourist trade. In that case, there was the added problem that none of the women who had told the police they had been raped would repeat their stories to anyone else.

If one of the wealthier summer residents of Amity was arrested for drunken driving, Brody was willing, on a first offense, to book him for driving without a license, and that charge would be duly reported in the Leader. But Brody made sure to warn the driver that the second time he was caught driving under the influence he would be charged, booked, and prosecuted for drunk driving.

Brody’s relationship with Meadows was based on a delicate balance. When groups of youngsters came to town from the Hamptons and caused trouble, Meadows was handed every fact — names, ages, and charges lodged. When Amity’s own youth made too much noise at a party, the Leader usually ran a one- paragraph story without names or addresses, informing the public that the police had been called to quell a minor disturbance on, say, Old Mill Road.

Because several summer residents found it fun to subscribe to the Leader year- round, the matter of wintertime vandalism of summer houses was particularly sensitive. For years, Meadows had ignored it — leaving it to Brody to make sure that the homeowner was notified, the offenders punished, and the appropriate repairmen dispatched to the house. But in the winter of 1968 sixteen houses were vandalized within a few weeks. Brody and Meadows agreed that the time had come for a full campaign in the Leader against wintertime vandals. The result was the wiring of the forty-eight homes to the police station, which — since the public didn’t know which houses were wired and which weren’t — all but eliminated vandalism, made Brody’s job much easier, and gave Meadows the image of a crusading editor.

Once in a while, Brody and Meadows collided. Meadows was a zealot against the use of narcotics. He was also a man with unusually keen reportorial antennae, and when he sensed a story — one not susceptible to “other considerations” — he would go after it like a pig after truffles. In the summer of 1971 the daughter of one of Amity’s richest families had died off the Scotch Road beach. To Brody, there was no evidence of foul play, and since the family opposed an autopsy, the death was officially listed as drowning.

But Meadows had reason to believe that the girl was on drugs and that she was being supplied by the son of a Polish potato farmer. It took Meadows almost two months to get the story, but in the end he forced an autopsy which proved that at the time she drowned the girl had been unconscious from an overdose of heroin. He also tracked down the pusher and exposed a fairly large drug ring operating in the Amity area. The story reflected badly on Amity and worse on Brody, who, because several federal violations were involved in the case, wasn’t even able to redeem his earlier insouciance by making an arrest or two. And it won Meadows two regional journalism prizes.

Now it was Brody’s turn to press for full disclosure. He intended to close the beaches for a couple of days, to give the shark time to travel far from the Amity shoreline. He didn’t know whether or not sharks could acquire a taste for human flesh (as he had heard tigers do), but he was determined to deprive the fish of any more people. This time he wanted publicity, to make people fear the water and stay away from it.

Brody knew there would be a strong argument against publicizing the attack. Like the rest of the country, Amity was still feeling the effects of the recession. So far, the summer was shaping up as a mediocre one. Rentals were up from last year, but they were not “good” rentals. Many were “groupers,” bands of ten or fifteen young people who came from the city and split the rent on a big house. At least a dozen of the $7,000–$10,000-a-season shore-front houses had not yet been rented, and many more in the $5,000 class were still without leases. Sensational reports of a shark attack might turn mediocrity into disaster.

Still, Brody thought, one death in mid-June, before the crowds come, would probably be quickly forgotten. Certainly it would have less effect than two or three more deaths would. The fish might well have disappeared already, but Brody wasn’t willing to gamble lives on the possibility: the odds might be good, but the stakes were prohibitively high.

He dialed Meadows’ number. “Hey, Harry,” he said. “Free for lunch?”

“I’ve been wondering when you’d call,” said Meadows. “Sure. My place or yours?”

Suddenly Brody wished he hadn’t called at mealtime. His stomach was still groaning, and the thought of food nauseated him. He glanced up at the wall calendar. It was a Thursday. Like all their friends on fixed, tight incomes, the Brodys shopped according to the supermarket specials. Monday’s special was chicken, Tuesday’s lamb, and so forth through the week. As each item was consumed, Ellen would note it on her list and replace it the next week. The only variables were bluefish and bass, which were inserted in the menu when a friendly fisherman dropped his overage by the house. Thursday’s special was hamburger, and Brody had seen enough chopped meat for one day.

“Yours,” he said. “Why don’t we order out from Cy’s? We can eat in your office.”

“Fine with me,” said Meadows. “What do you want? I’ll order now.”

“Egg salad, I guess, and a glass of milk. I’ll be right there.” Brody called Ellen to tell her he wouldn’t be home for lunch.

* * *

Harry Meadows was an immense man, for whom the act of drawing breath was exertion enough to cause perspiration to dot his forehead. He was in his late forties, ate too much, chain-smoked cheap cigars, drank bonded Bourbon, and was, in the words of his doctor, the Western world’s leading candidate for a huge coronary infraction.

When Brody arrived, Meadows was standing beside his desk, waving a towel at the open window. “In deference to what your lunch order tells me is a tender stomach,” he said, “I am trying to clear the air of essence of White Owl.”

“I appreciate that,” said Brody. He glanced around the small, cluttered room, searching for a place to sit.

“Just throw that crap off the chair there,” Meadows said. “They’re just government reports. Reports from the county, reports from the state, reports from the highway commission and the water commission. They probably cost about a million dollars, and from an informational point of view they don’t amount to a cup of spit.”

Brody picked up the heap of papers and piled them atop a radiator. He pulled the chair next to Meadows’ desk and sat down.

Meadows rooted around in a large brown paper bag, pulled out a plastic cup and a cellophane-wrapped sandwich, and slid them across the desk to Brody. Then he began to unwrap his own lunch, four separate packages which he opened and spread before himself with the loving care of a jeweler showing off rare gems: a meatball hero, oozing tomato sauce; a plastic carton filled with oily fried potatoes; a dill pickle the size of a small squash; and a quarter of a lemon meringue pie. He reached behind his chair and from a small refrigerator withdrew a sixteen-ounce can of beer. “Delightful,” he said with a smile as he surveyed the feast before him.

“Amazing,” said Brody, stifling an acid belch. “Absofuckinlutely amazing. I must have had about a thousand meals with you, Harry, but I still can’t get used to it.”

“Everyone has his little quirks, my friend,” Meadows said as he lifted his sandwich. “Some people chase other people’s wives. Some lose themselves in whiskey. I find my solace in nature’s own nourishment.”

“That’ll be some solace to Dorothy when your heart says, ‘That’s enough, buster, adios.’”

“We’ve discussed that, Dorothy and I,” said Meadows, filtering the words through a mouthful of bread and meat, “and we agree that one of the few advantages man has over other animals is the ability to choose the way to bring on his own death. Food may well kill me, but it’s also what has made life such a pleasure. Besides, I’d rather go my way than end up in the belly of a shark. After this morning, I’m sure you’ll agree.”

Brody was in the midst of swallowing a bite of egg salad sandwich, and he had to force it past a rising gag. “Don’t do that to me,” he said.

They ate in silence for a few moments. Brody finished his sandwich and milk, wadded the sandwich wrapper