Jaws (29 page)

"Don't know yet. I suppose I could take a four-inch shark hook and a length of noshit chain and drop it overboard with a bunch of bait on it. But if he took it, I wouldn't

know what to do with him. He'd tear out any cleat I've got on board, and until I see him I'm not going to take a chance and wrap chain around anything important." Quint flipped the baited hook overboard and fed out a few yards of line. "Come on, you bugger," he said. "Let's have a look at you."

The three men watched the port line. Hooper bent down, filled his ladle with churn, and tossed it into the slick. Something caught his eye and made him turn to the left. What he saw sucked from him a throaty grunt, unintelligible but enough to draw the eyes of the other two men.

"Jesus Christ!" said Brody.

No more than ten feet off the stern, slightly to the starboard, was the flat, conical

snout of the fish. It stuck out of the water perhaps two feet. The top of the head was a sooty gray, pocked with two black eyes. At each side of the end of the snout, where the gray turned to cream white, were the nostrils --deep slashes in the armored hide. The mouth was open not quite halfway, a dim, dark cavern guarded by huge, triangular teeth. Fish and men confronted each other for perhaps ten seconds. Then Quint yelled,

"Get an iron!" and, obeying himself, he dashed forward and began to fumble with a harpoon. Brody reached for the rifle. Just then, the fish slid quietly backward into the water. The long, scythed tail flicked once --Brody shot at it and missed --and the fish disappeared.

"He's gone," said Brody.

"Fantastic!" said Hooper. "That fish is everything I thought. And more. He's fantastic! That head must have been four feet across."

"Could be," said Quint, walking aft. He deposited two harpoon barbs, two barrels, and two coils of rope in the stern. "In case he comes back," he said.

"Have you ever seen a fish like that, Quint?" said Hooper. His eyes were bright, and he felt ebullient, vibrant.

"Not quite," said Quint.

"How long, would you say?"

"Hard to tell. Twenty feet. Maybe more. I don't know. With them things, it don't make much difference over six feet. Once they get to six feet, they're trouble. And this sonofabitch is trouble."

"God, I hope he comes back," said Hooper. Brody felt a chill, and he shuddered. "That was very strange," he said, shaking his

head. "He looked like he was grinning."

"That's what they look like when their mouths are open," said Quint. "Don't make him out to be more than he is. He's just a dumb garbage bucket."

"How can you say that?" said Hooper. "That fish is a beauty. It's the kind of thing

that makes you believe in a god. It shows you what nature can do when she sets her mind to it."

"Horseshit," said Quint, and he climbed the ladder to the flying bridge.

"Are you going to use the porpoise?" said Brody.

"No need. We got him on the surface once. He'll be back." As Quint spoke, a noise behind Hooper made him turn. It was a swishing noise, a liquid hiss. "Look," said Quint. Heading straight for the boat, thirty feet away, was a triangular dorsal fin more than a foot high, knifing the water and leaving a rippled wake.

It was followed by a towering tail that swatted left and right in tight cadence.

"It's attacking the boat!" cried Brody. Involuntarily, he backed into the seat of file:///C|/My Documents/Mike's Shit/utilities/books/pdf format/Benchley, Peter - Jaws.txt (106 of 131) [1/18/2001 2:02:23 AM]

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fighting chair and tried to draw away.

Quint came down from the flying bridge, cursing. "No fucking warning this time," he said. "Hand me that iron."

The fish was almost at the boat. It raised its flat head, gazed vacantly at Hooper

with one of its black eyes, and passed under the boat. Quint raised the harpoon and turned

back to the port side. The throwing pole struck the fighting chair, and the dart dislodged

and fell to the deck. "Cocksucker!" shouted Quint. "Is he still there?" He reached down, grabbed the dart, and stuck it back on the end of the pole.

"Your side, your side!" yelled Hooper. "He's passed this side already." Quint turned back in time to see the gray-brown shape of the fish as it pulled away from the boat and began to dive. He dropped the harpoon and, in a rage, snatched up the rifle and emptied the clip into the water behind the fish. "Bastard!" he said.

"Give

me some warning next time." Then he put the rifle down and laughed. "I suppose I should be grateful," he said. "At least he didn't attack the boat." He looked at Brody and said,

"Gave you a bit of a start."

"More 'n a bit," said Brody. He shook his head, as if to reassemble his thoughts and sort out his visions. "I'm still not sure I believe it." His mind was full of images of a

torpedo shape streaking upward in the blackness and tearing Christine Watkins to pieces; of the boy on the raft, unknowing, unsuspecting, until suddenly seized by a nightmare creature; and of the nightmares he knew would come to him, dreams of violence and blood and a woman screaming at him that he killed her son. "You can't tell me that thing's

a fish," he said. "It's more like one of those things they make movies about. You know, the monster from twenty million fathoms."

"It's a fish, all right," said Hooper. He was still visibly excited. "And what a fish!

Damn near megalodon."

"What are you talking about?" said Brody.

"That's an exaggeration," said Hooper, "but if there's something like this swimming around, what's to say megalodon isn't? What do you say, Quint?"

"I'd say the sun's got to you," said Quint.

"No, really. How big do you think these fish grow?"

"I'm no good at guessing. I'd put that fish at twenty feet, so I'd say they grow to

twenty feet. If I see one tomorrow that's twenty-five feet, I'll say they grow to twenty-five

feet. Guessing is bullshit."

"How big do they grow?" Brody asked, wishing immediately that he hadn't said anything. He felt that the question subordinated him to Hooper. But Hooper was too caught up in the moment, too flushed and happy, to be patronizing. "That's the point," he said. "Nobody knows. There was one in Australia that got snarled in some chains and drowned. He was measured at thirty-six feet, or so said the reports."

"That's almost twice as big as this one," said Brody. His mind, barely able to comprehend the fish he had seen, could not grasp the immensity of the one Hooper described.

Hooper nodded. "Generally, people seem to accept thirty feet as a maximum size, but the figure is fancy. It's like what Quint says. If they see one tomorrow that's sixty feet,

they'll accept sixty feet. The really terrific thing, the thing that blows your mind, is imagining --and it could be true --that there are great whites way down in the deep that

are a hundred feet long."

"Oh bullshit," said Quint.

"I'm not saying it's so," said Hooper. "I'm saying it could be so." file:///C|/My Documents/Mike's Shit/utilities/books/pdf format/Benchley, Peter - Jaws.txt (107 of 131) [1/18/2001 2:02:23 AM]

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"Still bullshit."

"Maybe. Maybe not. Look, the Latin name for this fish is Carcharodon carcharias, okay? The closest ancestor we can find for it is something called Carcharodon megalodon, a fish that existed maybe thirty or forty thousand years ago. We have fossil teeth from megalodon. They're six inches long. That would put the fish at between eighty and a hundred feet. And the teeth are exactly like the teeth you see in great whites today. What I'm getting at is, suppose the two fish are really one species. What's to say megalodon is really extinct? Why should it be? Not lack of food. If there's enough down there to support whales, there's enough to support sharks that big. Just because we've never seen a hundred-foot white doesn't mean they couldn't exist. They'd have no reason to come to the surface. All their food would be way down in the deep. A dead one wouldn't float to shore, because they don't have flotation bladders. Can you imagine what a hundred-foot white would look like? Can you imagine what it could do, what kind of power it would have?"

"I don't want to," said Brody.

"It would be like a locomotive with a mouth full of butcher knives."

"Are you saying this is just a baby?" Brody was beginning to feel lonely and vulnerable. A fish as large as what Hooper was describing could chew the boat to splinters.

"No, this is a mature fish," said Hooper. "I'm sure of it. But it's like people. Some

people are five feet tall, some people are seven feet tall. Boy, what I'd give to have a look

at a big megalodon."

"You're out of your mind," said Brody.

"No, man, just think of it. It would be like finding the Abominable Snowman."

"Hey, Hooper," said Quint, "do you think you can stop the fairy tales and start throwing chum overboard? I'd kind of like to catch a fish."

"Sure," said Hooper. He returned to his post at the stern and began to ladle chum into the water.

"You think he'll come back?" said Brody.

"I don't know," said Quint. "You never know what these bastards are going to do." From a pocket he took a note pad and a pencil. He extended his left arm and pointed it toward shore. He closed his right eye and sighted down the index finger of his left hand, then scribbled something on the pad. He moved his hand a couple of inches to the left, sighted again, and made another note. Anticipating a question from Brody, Quint said, "Taking bearings. I want to see where we are, so if he doesn't show up for the rest of

today, I'll know where to come tomorrow."

Brody looked toward Shore. Even shading his eyes and squinting, all he could see was a dim gray line of land. "What are you taking them on?"

"Lighthouse on the point and the water tower in town. They line up different ways depending where you are."

"You can see them?" Brody strained his eyes, but he saw nothing more distinct than a lump in the line.

"Sure. You could too, if you'd been out here for thirty years." Hooper smiled and said, "Do you really think the fish will stay in one place?"

"I don't know," said Quint. "But this is where we found him this time, and we didn't find him anywhere else."

"And he sure as hell stayed around Amity," said Brody.

"That's because he had food," said Hooper. There was no irony in his voice, no taunt. But the remark was like a needle stabbing into Brody's brain. They waited for three

more hours, but the fish never returned. The tide slackened, carrying the slick ever slower.

At a little after five, Quint said, "We might as well go in. It's enough to piss off

the Good Humor man."

"Where do you think he went?" said Brody. The question was rhetorical; he knew there was no answer.

"Anywhere," said Quint. "When you want 'em, they're never around. It's only file:///C|/My Documents/Mike's Shit/utilities/books/pdf format/Benchley, Peter - Jaws.txt (108 of 131) [1/18/2001 2:02:23 AM]

file:///C|/My Documents/Mike's Shit/utilities/books/pdf format/Benchley, Peter - Jaws.txt when you don't want 'em, and don't expect 'em, that they show up. Contrary fuckers."

"And you don't think we should spend the night, to keep the slick going."

"No. Like I said, if the slick gets too big, it's no good. We don't have any food out

here. And last but not least, you're not paying me for a twenty-four-hour day."

"If I could get the money, would you do it?" Quint thought for a moment. "Nope. It's tempting, though, 'cause I don't think there's much chance anything would happen at night. The slick would be big and confusing, and even if he came right up alongside and looked at us, we wouldn't know he was there unless he took a bite out of us. So it'd be taking your money just to let you sleep on board. But I won't do it, for two reasons. First off, if the slick did get too big, it

would screw us up for the next day. Second, I like to get this boat in at night."

"I guess I can't blame you," said Brody. "Your wife must like it better, too, having

you home." Quint said flatly, "Got no wife."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I never saw the need for one." Quint turned and climbed the ladder to the flying bridge.

Ellen was fixing the children's supper when the door-bell rang. The boys were watching television in the living room, and she called to them, "Would somebody please answer the door?"

She heard the door open, heard some words exchanged, and, a moment later, saw Larry Vaughan standing at the kitchen door. It had been less than two weeks since she had last seen him, yet the change in his appearance was so startling that she couldn't help

staring at him. As always, he was dressed perfectly --a two-button blue blazer, buttondown shirt, gray slacks, and Gucci loafers. It was his face that had changed. He had lost weight, and like many people who have no excess on their bodies, Vaughan showed the loss in his face. His eyes had receded in their sockets, and their color seemed to Ellen lighter than normal --a pasty gray. His skin looked gray, too, and appeared to droop at the cheekbones. His lips were moist, and he licked them every few seconds. Embarrassed when she found herself staring, Ellen lowered her eyes and said,

"Larry. Hello."

"Hello, Ellen. I stopped by to..." Vaughan backed up a few steps and peered into the living room. "First of all, do you suppose I could have a drink?"

"Of course. You know where everything is. Help yourself. I'd get it for you, but my hands are covered with chicken."

"Don't be silly. I can find everything." Vaughan opened the cupboard where the liquor was kept, took out a bottle, and poured a glass full of gin. "As I started to say, I

stopped by to say farewell."

Ellen stopped shuffling pieces of chicken in the frying pan and said, "You're going away? For how long?"

"I don't know. Perhaps for good. There's nothing here for me any more."