FOURTEEN
When he drove up to the dock, Quint was waiting for him — a tall, impassive figure whose yellow oilskins shone under the dark sky. He was sharpening a harpoon dart on a carborundum stone.
“I almost called you,” Brody said as he pulled on his slicker. “What does this weather mean?”
“Nothing,” said Quint. “It’ll let up after a while. Or even if it doesn’t, it don’t matter. He’ll be there.”
Brody looked up at the scudding clouds. “Gloomy enough.”
“Fitting,” said Quint, and he hopped aboard the boat.
“Is it just us?”
“Just us. You expecting somebody else?”
“No. But I thought you liked an extra pair of hands.”
“You know this fish as well as any man, and more hands won’t make no difference now. Besides, it’s nobody else’s business.”
Brody stepped from the dock onto the transom, and was about to jump down to the deck when he noticed a canvas tarpaulin covering something in a corner. “What’s that?” he said, pointing.
“Sheep.” Quint turned the ignition key. The engine coughed once, caught, and began to chug evenly.
“What for?” Brody stepped down onto the deck. “You going to sacrifice it?”
Quint barked a brief, grim laugh. “Might at that,” he said. “No, it’s bait. Give him a little breakfast before we have at him. Undo my stern line.” He walked forward and cast off the bow and spring lines.
As Brody reached for the stern line, he heard a car engine. A pair of headlights sped along the road, and there was a squeal of rubber as the car stopped at the end of the pier. A man jumped out of the car and ran toward the Orca. It was the Times reporter, Bill Whitman.
“I almost missed yon,” he said, panting.
“What do you want?” said Brody.
“I want to come along. Or, rather, I’ve been ordered to come along.”
“Tough shit,” said Quint. “I don’t know who you are, but nobody’s coming along. Brody, cast off the stern line.”
“Why not?” said Whitman. “I won’t get in the way. Maybe I can help. Look, man, this is news. If you’re going to catch that fish, I want to be there.”
“Fuck yourself,” said Quint.
“I’ll charter a boat and follow you.”
Quint laughed. “Go ahead. See if you can find someone foolish enough to take you out. Then try to find us. It’s a big ocean. Throw the line, Brody!”
Brody tossed the stern line onto the dock. Quint pushed the throttle forward, and the boat eased out of the slip. Brody looked back and saw Whitman walking down the pier toward his car.
The water off Montank was rough, for the wind — from the southeast now — was at odds with the tide. The boat lurched through the waves, its bow pounding down and casting a mantle of spray. The dead sheep bounced in the stern.
When they reached the open sea, heading southwest, their motion was eased. The rain had slacked to a drizzle, and with each moment there were fewer whitecaps tumbling from the top of waves.
They had been around the point only fifteen minutes when Quint pulled back on the throttle and slowed the engine.
Brody looked toward shore. In the growing light he could see the water tower clearly — a black point rising from the gray strip of land. The lighthouse beacon still shone. “We’re not out as far as we usually go,” he said.
“No.”
“We can’t be more than a couple of miles offshore.”
“Just about.”
“So why are you stopping?”
“I got a feeling.” Quint pointed to the left, to a cluster of lights farther down the shore. “That’s Amity there.”
“So?”
“I don’t think he’ll be so far out today. I think he’ll be somewhere between here and Amity.”
“Why?”
“Like I said, it’s a feeling. There’s not always a why to these things.”
“Two days in a row we found him farther out.”
“Or he found us.”
“I don’t get it, Quint. For a man who says there’s no such thing as a smart fish, you’re making this one out to be a genius.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
Brody bristled at Quint’s sly, enigmatic tone. “What kind of game are you playing?”
“No game. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong.”
“And we try somewhere else tomorrow.” Brody half hoped Quint would be wrong, that there would be a day’s reprieve.
“Or later today. But I don’t think we’ll have to wait that long.” Quint cut the engine, went to the stern, and lifted a bucket of chum onto the transom. “Start chummin’,” he said, handing Brody the ladle. He uncovered the sheep, tied a rope around its neck, and lay it on the gunwale. He slashed its stomach and flung the animal overboard, letting it drift twenty feet from the boat before securing the rope to an after cleat. Then he went forward, unlashed two barrels, and carried them, and their coils of ropes and harpoon darts, back to the stern. He set the barrels on each side of the transom, each next to its own rope, and slipped one dart onto the wooden throwing shaft. “Okay,” he said. “Now let’s see how long it takes.”
The sky had lightened to full, gray daylight, and in ones and twos the lights on the shore flicked off.
The stench of the mess Brody was ladling overboard made his stomach turn, and he wished he had eaten something — anything — before he left home.
Quint sat on the flying bridge, watching the rhythms of the sea.
Brody’s butt was sore from sitting on the hard transom, and his arm was growing weary from the dipping and emptying of the ladle. So he stood up, stretched, and facing off the stern, tried a new scooping motion with the ladle.
Suddenly he saw the monstrous head of the fish — not five feet away, so close he could reach over and touch it with the ladle — black eyes staring at him, silver-gray snout pointing at him, gaping jaw grinning at him. “Oh, God!” Brody said, wondering in his shock how long the fish had been there before he had stood up and turned around. “There he is!”
Quint was down the ladder and at the stern in an instant. As he jumped onto the transom, the fish’s head slipped back into the water and, a second later, slammed into the transom. The jaws closed on the wood, and the head shook violently from side to side. Brody grabbed a cleat and held on, unable to look away from the eyes. The boat shuddered and jerked each time the fish moved its head. Quint slipped and fell to his knees on the transom. The fish let go and dropped beneath the surface, and the boat lay still again.
“He was waiting for us!” yelled Brody.
“I know,” said Quint.
“How did he—”
“It don’t matter,” said Quint. “We’ve got him now.”
“We’ve got him? Did you see what he did to the boat?”
“Give it a mighty good shake, didn’t he?”
The rope holding the sheep tightened, shook for a moment, then went slack.
Quint stood and picked up the harpoon. “He’s took the sheep. It’ll be a minute before he comes back.”
“How come he didn’t take the sheep first?”
“He got no manners,” Quint cackled. “Come on, you motherfucker. Come and get your due.”
Brody saw fever in Quint’s face — a heat that lit up his dark eyes, an intensity that drew his lips back from his teeth in a crooked smile, an anticipation that strummed the sinews in his neck and whitened his knuckles.