CHAPTER FOUR
Flicka
Brody sits on the beach and looks at the sea.
“Hello, Mr. Brody,” Hendricks says. He walks up to Brody. “What are you doing here?”
“Ben Gardner went out there this morning. He's looking for the shark. But I can't see him on his boat.”
“Was there anybody with him?”
“I don't know.”
“Do you want to go and see? It'll be light for two more hours. I can get a fast boat.”
Brody feels afraid. He is a very bad swimmer. “OK,” he says. 'You get the boat. I'll call his wife.”
Twenty minutes later Brody climbs into Hendricks' boat.
“What did she say?” asks Hendricks.
“Nothing. She called him on his radio, but there was no answer. Maybe he turned it off.”
“And there was nobody with him?”
“No.”
“I don't understand,” says Hendricks. “Why did he turn his radio off? People don't usually do that.”
Hendricks starts the boat, and they move out to sea. Gardner's boat is more than a kilometer from the shore. As they get nearer, Brody reads its name: “Flicka”.
When they are fifty meters from the Flicka, Hendricks slows the boat down.
Brody stands up and calls out, “Ben!” There is no answer.
The two men climb on to the fishing boat. “Are you here, Ben?” Again, there is no answer.
There is a sudden noise and Brody jumps. It is from the radio.
Brody looks at Hendricks. “He didn't turn off his radio.”
“I don't understand it, Mr. Brody. Did Ben fall overboard? But he's not in the water and he swims very well.”
Brody looks down into the water and sees four holes in the boat. “Look at these, Leonard. Can you see what made them?”
Hendricks goes down into the sea and looks at the holes. After a few seconds, he looks up and says, “Do you have a knife?”
Brody gives Hendricks a knife. “What can you see?” he asks.
“I don't know. Something white in one of the holes.”
Hendricks puts his head back down into the water. After a short time, he comes up and says, “OK. I've got it.”
Brody helps Hendricks back on to the boat and Hendricks drops something big and white into Brody's hand.
“It's a tooth!” says Hendricks. “Oh no! Do you think the shark got Ben?”
Brody does not answer. He looks at the tooth again. Then he puts it in his bag. “We can't do anything here now,” he says.
It is nearly dark when they get back. Harry Meadows meets them. He has a young man with him.
“This is Matt Hooper, Martin. What did you find out there?”
Brody tells them about the boat. Then he takes out the tooth and hands it to Hooper.
“What is it, Matt?” asks Meadows.
Hooper looks at the tooth. “It's from a very big Great White Shark.”
“What do you think happened?”
“I think this fish killed Mr. Gardner.”
“How?” says Brody.
“Maybe he fell overboard. Maybe the fish pulled him over.”
“What about the tooth in the boat?”
“The fish attacked the boat.”
“What for?”
“Sharks are not very clever, Mr. Brody. They try to eat everything.”
“But a boat...!”
“A shark doesn't think. To him it wasn't a boat. It was something big in the water. Remember that sharks are afraid of nothing in the sea. They attack anything.”
“And why is he staying around here for so long?”
“I don't know. It's unusual, but sharks are unusual. We don't understand much about them. But I can try and find this shark. Can I have a boat?”
“Yes, I'm sorry to say,” says Brody. “Ben Gardner's. We'll get you out to it tomorrow. Do you think you can catch that fish?”
“I'm not going to catch it.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“I don't know. I'll see.”
Brody looks into Hooper's eyes and says, “I want somebody to kill that fish.”
Hooper laughs. “Who are you going to get to do the job?”
“There's a fisherman called Quint,” says Meadows. “But I don't know much about him. He works somewhere near Promised Land Beach.”
Hooper says, “Look, Mr. Brody, this is only a shark!”
Brody begins to feel angry. Hooper does not understand!
The next day Larry Vaughan meets Brody and Hooper. “Hello, Martin. I heard about Ben Gardner. What are you going to do?”
“We closed the beaches down.”
“I know that! Nobody is coming to Amity now.”
“So what do you want me to do?” says Brody.
“I thought... Can we open the beaches for the Fourth of July weekend?”
“No, we cannot.”
“Now listen…”
“No, you listen, Larry. I listened to you before, and two people died. We're going to catch that fish. Then we'll open the beaches.”
“But this town is dying!”
“I know, Larry,” says Brody. “But we can do nothing about it.”
