Peter Benchley - Jaws

Brody sat on the public beach, his elbows 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, uncleated 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 Aqua-Sport was only a few feet from the port quarter of the Flicka . Hendricks pushed the handle into neutral, then gave it a quick burst of reverse. The AquaSport stopped and, on the next swell, nestled up against the Flicka ’s gunwale. Brody gabbed 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.”