“That’s all there is. You just got to outguess ’em. It’s no trick. They’re stupid as sin.”

“You’ve never found a smart fish?”

“Never met one yet.”

Brody remembered the leering, grinning face that had stared up at him from the water. “I don’t know,” he said. “That fish sure looked mean yesterday. Like he meant to be mean. Like he knew what he was doing.”

“Shit, he don’t know nothing.”

“Do they have different personalities?”

“Fish?” Quint laughed. “That’s giving them more credit than they’re due. You can’t treat ’em like people, even though I guess some people are as dumb as fish. No. They do different things sometimes, but after a while you get to know everything they can do.”

“It’s not a challenge, then. You’re not fighting an enemy.”

“No. No more ’n a plumber who’s trying to unstick a drain. Maybe he’ll cuss at it and hit it with a wrench. But down deep he don’t think he’s fighting somebody. Sometimes I run into an ornery fish that gives me more trouble than other ones, but I just use different tools.”

“There are fish you can’t catch, aren’t there?”

“Oh sure, but that don’t mean they’re smart or sneaky or anything. It only means they’re not hungry when you try to catch ’em, or they’re too fast for you, or you’re using the wrong bait.”

Quint fell silent for a moment, then spoke again. “Once,” he said, “a shark almost caught me. It was about twenty years ago. I had a fair-size blue shark to gaff and he gave a big yank and hauled me overboard with him.”

“What did you do?”

“I come up over that transom so fast I don’t think my feet touched anything between water and deck. I was lucky I fell over the stern, where it’s fairly low down, near the water. If I’d of fallen over amidships, I don’t know what I would’ve done. Anyway, I was out of that water before the fish even knew I was in it. He was busy trying to shake the gaff.”

“Suppose you fell over with this fish. Is there anything you could do?”

“Sure. Pray. It’d be like falling out of an airplane without a parachute and hoping you’ll land in a haystack. The only thing that’d save you would be God, and since He pushed you overboard in the first place, I wouldn’t give a nickel for your chances.”

“There’s a woman in Amity who thinks that’s why we’re having trouble,” said Brody. “She thinks it’s some sort of divine retribution.”

Quint smiled. “Might be. He made the damn thing, I suppose He can tell it what to do.”

“You serious?”

“No, not really. I don’t put much stock in religion.”

“So why do you think people have been killed?”

“Bad luck.” Quint pulled back on the throttle. The boat slowed and settled in the swells. “We’ll try to change it.” He took a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, read the notes, and sighting along his outstretched arm, checked his bearings. He turned the ignition key, and the engine died. There was a weight, a thickness, to the sudden silence. “Okay, Hooper,” he said. “Start chuckin’ the shit overboard.”