A Jaws Retelling

An Unorthodox Autopsy

Brody turned around with a broken look on his face, but as the mayor disappeared and he sauntered over to Ruth and Hooper, a glint of determination appeared in his eyes. Hooper, uncharacteristically ignoring Brody's pain, jumped right in to what Ruth assumed he was trying to tell Martin before.

"Martin, the chances that these bozos caught the shark is a hundred to one, Martin, a hundred to one." Martin turned and nearly glared at Hooper, as pointedly as he could with his soft, kind eyes. Ruth agreed with Hooper, and she knew the reasonable part of Martin did too, but he didn't want to admit it.

"Are you kidding?" Brody shouted. "There aren't sharks like that sonofabitch out there, there aren't!" He looked to Ruth to back him up, but she shook her head.

"You know we want to be sure, Martin." She said softly. "We need to be." He ran a hand down his face, turned and stalked off, muttering expletives all the way. But he walked in the direction of the shark, so Ruth and Hooper took what they could get and followed a very begrudging Brody.

"We wait for dark," he relented. "When no one is around we do what he have to do to find out."

~~~

The three returned to the docks at sundown. After today's excitement it was void of fisherman, everyone who had not been on the boat responsible for catching the tiger shark feeling quite inadequate by comparison. Hooper pulled out a thick knife and Brody stifled the chief part of him that wanted to ask immediately where he'd gotten it. He also had to stifle his bile as Hooper drug the knife across the underside of the shark and a milky, foul liquid poured out of the incision. Ruth, who was helping him hold open the cut, wasn't as prepared as Brody (surprisingly) seemed to have been for the smell, and she began to get the uncomfortable sensation of trying not to breathe in the stench while also trying to breath to stop herself from being sick. She ended up keeling over the edge of the dock, dry heaving followed by a short but violent period of being sick. That was enough to finally set Brody off, and as he couldn't make it to the dock, he just spilled his guts right there on top of the shark's.

Hooper, the only one who was able to keep his lunch down, grimaced at the two. "Come on, guys," he moaned through gritted teeth as he struggled to pull things from the shark's stomach. A license plate ("No, Martin, the shark didn't eat a car,"), a tin can, a couple of fish. No boy, and certainly no Chrissie  Watkins.

Brody screamed in frustration and kicked the dented license plate, sending it careening across the little lake of milky white liquid. It was a rare display of rage on Brody's part, but Ruth and Hooper knew it was totally warranted, and so both just sat there and watched with a kind of warped fascination. It was as though few things could phase them after what they had already been through, and yet they had a feeling, an instinct soon to be proven right, that there was more to come.

After Brody was done hyperventilating as far from the water and the "damn shark" as he could get, he sank to the ground and stayed there for a minute or two. Ruth didn't dare move except to scoot away from the water's edge inch by inch until she was as close as she dared to get to the shark's spilled innards. When Brody's labored breathing had finally calmed, Hooper walked over to him and wordlessly extended his hand to Brody, which the chief gratefully took with equal silence. A minute passed when they did nothing but stand there, Ruth watching in a daze. Then Hooper and Brody pulled each other into a hug, a back pat, and the two parted. Brody and Hooper noticed Ruth looking entranced, slightly hazy, and Hooper beat the still unsteady Brody to her to help her up as well. He leaned down to close between them their height difference, and his blue eyes peered into her clouded brown ones.

"You okay, Ruth?" He asked quietly. Ruth nodded as Brody watched intently. Hooper instinctively placed a hand on the small of her back and led her towards Brody, unaware of what he was doing and the effect it was having on Ruth as she began to come out of her daze. Brody slung an arm over both their backs and the three walked away from the docks, completely unconcerned now with the shark that lay dead on the barnacle-spotted, milky-white-washed wood, the least of their problems.