Peter Benchley - Jaws

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 scrapped the tooth against the gun-wale, 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.