Jaws by Peter Benchley
Brody smiled. The mayor. Not Larry Vaughan, just calling to check in. Not Lawrence Vaughan of Vaughan & Penrose Real Estate, stopping by to complain about some noisy tenants. But Mayor Lawrence P. Vaughan, the people’s choice—by seventy-one votes in the last election. “Send his honor in,” Brody said.
Larry Vaughan was a handsome man, in his early fifties, with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair and a body kept trim by exercise. Though he was a native of Amity, over the years he had developed an air of understated chic. He had made a great deal of money in postwar real estate speculation in Amity, and he was the senior partner (some thought the only partner, since no one had ever met or spoken to anyone named Penrose in Vaughan’s office) in the most successful agency in town. He dressed with elegant simplicity, in timeless British jackets, button-down shirts, and Weejun loafers. Unlike Ellen Brody, who had descended from summer folk to winter folk and was unable to make the adjustment, Vaughan had ascended smoothly from winter folk to summer folk, adjusting each step of the way with grace. He was not one of them, for he was technically a local merchant, so he was never asked to visit them in New York or Palm Beach. But in Amity he moved freely among all but the most aloof members of the summer community, which, of course, did an immense amount of good for his business. He was asked to most of the important summer parties, and he always arrived alone. Very few of his friends knew that he had a wife at home, a simple, adoring woman who spent much of her time doing needlepoint in front of her television set.
Brody liked Vaughan. He didn’t see much of him during the summer, but after Labor Day, when things calmed down, Vaughan felt free to shed some of his social scales, and every few weeks he and his wife would ask Brody and Ellen out to dinner at one of the better restaurants in the Hamptons. The evenings were special treats for Ellen, and that in itself was enough to make Brody happy. Vaughan seemed to understand Ellen. He always acted most graciously, treating Ellen as a clubmate and comrade.
Vaughan walked into Brady’s office and sat down. “I just talked to Harry Meadows,” he said.
Vaughan was obviously upset, which interested Brody. He hadn’t expected this reaction. “I see,” he said. “Harry doesn’t waste any time.”
“Where are you going to get the authority to close the beaches?”
“Are you asking me as the mayor or as a real estate broker or out of friendly interest or what, Larry?”
Vaughan pressed, and Brody could see he was having trouble controlling his temper. “I want to know where you’re going to get the authority. I want to know now.”
“Officially, I’m not sure I have it,” Brody said. “There’s something in the code that says I can take whatever actions I deem necessary in the event of an emergency, but I think the selectmen have to declare a state of emergency. I don’t imagine you want to go through all that rigmarole.”
“Not a chance.”
“Well, then, unofficially I figure it’s my responsibility to keep the people who live here as safe as I can, and at the moment it’s my judgment that that means closing the beaches for a couple of days. If it ever came down to cases, I’m not sure I could arrest anyone for going swimming. Unless,” Brody smiled, “I could make a case of criminal stupidity.”
Vaughan ignored the remark. “I don’t want you to close the beaches,” he said.
“So I see.”
“You know why. The Fourth of July isn’t far off, and that’s the make-or-break weekend. We’d be cutting our own throats.”
“I know the argument, and I’m sure you know my reasons for wanting to close the beaches. It’s not as if I have anything to gain.”
“No. I’d say quite the opposite is true. Look, Martin, this town doesn’t need that kind of publicity.”
“It doesn’t need any more people killed, either.”
“Nobody else is going to get killed, for God’s sake. All you’d be doing by closing the beaches is inviting a lot of reporters to come snooping around where they don’t have any business.”
“So? They’d come out here, and when they didn’t find anything worth reporting, they’d go home again. I don’t imagine the New York Times has much interest in covering a lodge picnic or a garden-club supper.”
“We just don’t need it. Suppose they did find something. There’d be a big to-do that couldn’t do anybody any good.”
“Like what, Larry? What could they find out? I don’t have anything to hide. Do you?”
“No, of course not. I was just thinking about … maybe the rapes. Something unsavory.”
“Crap,” said Brody. “That’s all past history.”
“Dammit, Martin!” Vaughan paused for a moment, struggling to calm himself. “Look, if you won’t listen to reason, will you listen to me as a friend? I’m under a lot of pressure from my partners. Something like this could be very bad for us.”
Brody laughed. “That’s the first time I’ve heard you admit you had partners, Larry. I thought you ran that shop like an emperor.”
Vaughan was embarrassed, as if he felt he had said too much. “My business is very complicated,” he said. “There are times I’m not sure I understand what’s going on. Do me this favor. This once.”
Brody looked at Vaughan, trying to fathom his motives. “I’m sorry, Larry, I can’t. I wouldn’t be doing my job.”
“If you don’t listen to me,” said Vaughan, “you may not have your job much longer.”
“You haven’t got any control over me. You can’t fire any cop in this town.”
“Not off the force, no. But believe it or not, I do have discretion over the job of chief of police.”
“I don’t believe it.”
From his jacket pocket Vaughan took a copy of the corporate charter of the town of Amity. “You can read it yourself,” he said, flipping through until he found the page he sought. “It’s right here.” He handed the pamphlet across the desk to Brody. “What it says, in effect, is that even though you were elected to the chief’s job by the people, the selectmen have the power to remove you.”
Brody read the paragraph Vaughan had indicated. “I guess you’re right,” he said. “But I’d love to see what you put down for ‘good and sufficient cause.’ ”
“I dearly hope it doesn’t come to that, Martin. I had hoped this conversation wouldn’t even get this far. I had hoped that you would go along, once you knew how I and the selectmen felt.”
“All the selectmen?”
“A majority.”
“Like who?”
“I’m not going to sit here and name names for you. I don’t have to. All you have to know is that I have the board behind me, and if you won’t do what’s right, we’ll put someone in your job who will.”
Brody had never seen Vaughan in a mood so aggressively ugly. He was fascinated, but he was also slightly shaken. “You really want this, don’t you, Larry?”
“I do.” Sensing victory, Vaughan said evenly, “Trust me, Martin. You won’t be sorry.”
Brody sighed. “Shit,” he said. “I don’t like it. It doesn’t smell good. But okay, if it’s that important.”
“It’s that important.” For the first time since he had arrived, Vaughan smiled. “Thanks, Martin,” he said, and he stood up. “Now I have the rather unpleasant task of visiting the Footes.”
“How are you going to keep them from shooting off their mouths to the Times or the News?”
“I hope to be able to appeal to their public-spiritedness,” Vaughan said, “just as I appealed to yours.”
“Bull.”
“We do have one thing going for us. Miss Watkins was a nobody. She was a drifter. No family, no close friends. She said she had hitchhiked East from Idaho. So she won’t be missed.”
Brody arrived home a little before five. His stomach had settled down enough to permit him a beer or two before dinner. Ellen was in the kitchen, still dressed in the pink uniform of a hospital volunteer. Her hands were immersed in chopped meat, kneading it into a meat loaf.
“
“You were at the hospital. You didn’t hear?”
“No. Today was bathe-the-old-ladies day. I never got off the Ferguson wing.”
“A girl got killed off Old Mill.”
“By what?”
“A shark.” Brody reached into the refrigerator and found a beer.
Ellen stopped kneading meat and looked at him. “A shark! I’ve never heard of that around here. You see one once in a while, but they never do anything.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s a first for me, too.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Nothing.”
“Really? Is that sensible? I mean, isn’t there anything you can do?”
“Sure, there are some things I could do. Technically. But there’s nothing I can actually do. What you and I think doesn’t carry much weight around here. The powers-that-be are worried that it won’t look nice if we get all excited just because one stranger got killed by a fish. They’re willing to take the chance that it was just a freak accident that won’t happen again. Or, rather, they’re willing to let me take the chance, since it’s my responsibility.”
“What do you mean, the powers-that-be?”
“Larry Vaughan, for one.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize you had talked to Larry.”
“He came to see me as soon as he heard I planned to close the beaches. He wasn’t what you’d call subtle about telling me he didn’t want the beaches closed. He said he’d have my job if I did close them.”
“I can’t believe that, Martin. Larry isn’t like that.”
“I didn’t think so, either. Hey, by the way, what do you know about his partners?”
“In the business? I didn’t think there were any. I thought Penrose was his middle name, or something like that. Anyway, I thought he owned the whole thing.”
“So did I. But apparently not.”
“Well, it makes me feel better to know you talked to Larry before you made any decision. He tends to take a wider, more over-all view of things than most people. He probably does know what’s best.”
Brody felt the blood rise in his neck. He said simply, “Crap.” Then he tore the metal tab off his beer can, flipped it into the garbage can, and walked into the living room to turn on the evening news.
From the kitchen Ellen called, “I forgot to tell you: you had a call a little while ago.”
“Who from?”
“He didn’t say. He just said to tell you you’re doing terrific job. It was nice of him to call, don’t you think?”
4
For the next few days the weather remained clear and unusually calm. The wind came softly, steadily from the southwest, a gentle breeze that rippled the surface of the sea but made no whitecaps. There was a crispness to the air only at night, and after days of constant sun, the earth and sand had warmed.
Sunday was the twentieth of June. Public schools still had a week or more to run before breaking for the summer, but the private schools in New York had already released their charges. Families who owned summer homes in Amity had been coming out for weekends since the beginning of May. Summer tenants whose leases ran from June 15 to September 15 had unpacked and, familiar now with where linen closets were, which cabinets contained good china and which the everyday stuff, and which beds were softer than others, were already beginning to feel at home.
By noon, the beach in front of Scotch and Old Mill roads was speckled with people. Husbands lay semi-comatose on beach towels, trying to gain strength from the sun before an afternoon of tennis and the trip back to New York on the Long Island Rail Road’s Cannonball. Wives leaned against aluminum backrests, reading Helen MacInnes and John Cheever and Taylor Caldwell, interrupting themselves now and then to pour a cup of dry vermouth from the Scotch cooler.
Teen-agers lay serried in tight, symmetrical rows, the boys enjoying the sensation of grinding their pelvises into the sand, thinking of pudenda and occasionally stretching their necks to catch a brief glimpse of some, exposed, wittingly or not, by girls who lay on their backs with their legs spread.
These were not Aquarians. They uttered none of the platitudes of peace or pollution, or justice or revolt. Privilege had been bred into them with genetic certainty. As their eyes were blue or brown, so their tastes and consciences were determined by other generations. They had no vitamin deficiencies, no sickle-cell anemia. Their teeth—thanks either to breeding or to orthodontia—were straight and white and even. Their bodies were lean, their muscles toned by boxing lessons at age nine, riding lessons at twelve, and tennis lessons ever since. They had no body odor. When they sweated, the girls smelled faintly of perfume; the boys smelled simply clean.
None of which is to say that they were either stupid or evil. If their IQs could have been tested en masse, they would have shown native ability well within the top 10 per cent of all mankind. And they had been, were being, educated at schools that provided every discipline, including exposure to minority-group sensibilities, revolutionary philosophies, ecological hypotheses, political power tactics, drugs, and sex. Intellectually, they knew a great deal. Practically, they chose to know almost nothing. They had been conditioned to believe (or, if not to believe, to sense) that the world was really quite irrelevant to them. And they were right. Nothing touched them—not race riots in places like Trenton, New Jersey, or Gary, Indiana; not the fact that parts of the Missouri River were so foul that the water sometimes caught fire spontaneously; not police corruption in New York or the rising number of murders in San Francisco or revelations that hot dogs contained insect filth and hexachlorophine caused brain damage. They were inured even to the economic spasms that wracked the rest of America. Undulations in the stock markets were nuisances noticed, if at all, as occasions for fathers to bemoan real or fancied extravagances.
Those were the ones who returned to Amity every summer. The others—and there were some, mavericks—marched and bleated and joined and signed and spent their summers working for acronymic social-action groups. But because they had rejected Amity and, at most, showed up for an occasional Labor Day weekend, they, too, were irrelevant.
The little children played in the sand at the water’s edge, digging holes and flinging muck at each other, unconscious and uncaring of what they were and what they would become.
A boy of six stopped skimming flat stones out into the water. He walked up the beach to where his mother lay dozing, and he flopped down next to her towel. “Hey, Mom,” he said, limning aimless doodles with his finger in the sand.
His mother turned to look at him, shielding her eyes from the sun. “What?”
“I’m bored.”
“How can you be bored? It isn’t even July.”
“I don’t care. I’m bored. I don’t have anything to do.”
“You’ve got a whole beach to play on.”
“I know. But there’s nothing to do on it. Boy, am I bored.”
“Why don’t you go throw a ball?”
“With who? There’s nobody here.”
“I see a lot of people. Have you looked for the Harrises? What about Tommy Converse?”
“They’re not here. Nobody’s here. I sure am bored.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Alex.”
“Can I go swimming?”
“No. It’s too cold.”
“How do you know?”
“I know, that’s all. Besides, you know you can’t go alone.”
“Will you come with me?”
“Into the water? Certainly not.”
“No, I mean just to watch me.”
“Alex, Mom is pooped, absolutely exhausted. Can’t you find anything else to do?”
“Can I go out on my raft?”
“Out where?”
“Just out there a little ways. I won’t go swimming. I’ll just lie on my raft.”
His mother sat up and put on her sunglasses. She looked up and down the
Before she could turn her head, the boy guessed what she was feeling. “I bet Dad would let me,” he said.
“Alex, you should know by now that that’s the wrong way to get me to do anything.” She looked down the beach in the other direction. Except for a few couples in the dim distance, it was empty. “Oh, all right,” she said. “Go ahead. But don’t go too far out. And don’t go swimming.” She looked at the boy and, to show she was serious, lowered her glasses so he could see her eyes.
“Okay,” he said. He stood up, grabbed his rubber raft, and dragged it down to the water. He picked up the raft, held it in front of him, and walked seaward. When the water reached his waist, he leaned forward. A swell caught the raft and lifted it, with the boy aboard. He centered himself so the raft lay flat. He paddled with both arms, stroking smoothly. His feet and ankles hung over the rear of the raft. He moved out a few yards, then turned and began to paddle up and down the beach. Though he didn’t notice it, a gentle current carried him slowly offshore.
Fifty yards farther out, the ocean floor dropped precipitously—not with the sheerness of a canyon wall, but from a slope of perhaps ten degrees to more than forty-five degrees. The water was fifteen feet deep where the slope began to change. Soon it was twenty-five, then forty, then fifty feet deep. It leveled off at a hundred feet for about half a mile, then rose in a shoal that neared the surface a mile from shore. Seaward of the shoal, the floor dropped quickly to two hundred feet and then, still farther out, the true ocean depths began.
In thirty-five feet of water, the great fish swam slowly, its tail waving just enough to maintain motion. It saw nothing, for the water was murky with motes of vegetation. The fish had been moving parallel to the shoreline. Now it turned, banking slightly, and followed the bottom gradually upward. The fish perceived more light in the water, but still it saw nothing.