He would have been thirty-seven years old today. The exact same age she was when he died. Her Alex, her little soldier and only son. Lee Kintner stood barefoot on the edge of Amity Town Beach, dark clouds and the soft wind acting as her only companions. Behind her, the once bright changing huts had crumbled into seaside tombstones. The karate class on the island still had a few loyal members and these huts remained the perfect object for practice. Everything around her seemed dead, even the ocean: it's waves barely rising to create an inch of white foam. She had resisted coming here for more than twenty years, it simply never occurred to her that it would do any good. All the psychologists and good meaning friends constantly told her that his body wasn't here, his final resting place was upstate in the family plot and so she should grieve there. But being here now, the gritty sand funneled between her toes and the ashtray sky looming above, she could feel Alex's soul still trapped beneath these murky waters, stuck forever, unable to break the surface.
Unanswerable questions carouselled in her mind. Where would his life have taken him? Who would he have fallen in love with? What job would he be doing now? A businessman, like the father he never met? A law practitioner like she had chosen? Maybe, and more probably, a Lifeguard - he did so love the water. Always asking for a little longer. "Just ten more minutes", Lee had said to him. The last thing she had ever said to him. What she would do now for even just one more minutein his company. And he was such a sweet boy, not like the other sons of Amity, all rough and raw around the edges. He was soft spoken, kept to himself. Maybe that was his down fall. Maybe if he had stayed with the pack instead of swimming out further he could have survived. The beast wouldn't have singled him out so easily. She was stood in the exact same spot as best as she could remember. The place in the sand where she had been sitting the moment it had happened; the loud cry, people around her motioning to the ocean, a geyser of blood shooting from the water. Snapshots that refused to degrade in her mind despite the passing of time.
The cocoon of silence was abruptly shattered by youthful cries storming towards the water. Lee turned to see four teenage boys in bathing suits gathering at the waters edge a couple hundred yards down the beach. The group skidded to a halt at the tip of the waves and started nudging each other in the ribs enthusiastically, selecting who would be brave enough to 'Play Kintner'. She had heard about this new custom created by the town's children. A game dating back to when people thought monsters roamed in the back woods, the ultimate rights of passage for young men and women. The dare is to see how long you can stay in the water, in the cave of the monster, before your nerve crumbles and you run back to the safety of your friends. The Amity Attacks had created a palpable barrier around the shoreline, now no one entered the water unless you were ready to demonstrate true bravery. A volunteer finally emerged from the gang. He was a lanky, dark haired boy, a face that festered with spots and freckles. After a few further moments of teasing by his co-horts he treaded through the ankle deep water. The watchers on the beach hollered his name while clapping their hands to build tension. Before Leigh could think better of it, she was already marching towards the children.
Superstition and money are the backbone of any small community; the needle that channels the thread of human desire, process and thought. After 1975, Lee made it her mission to at least break the money element of Amity's nervous system. First, after the real shark was destroyed and the town edged back toward normality she sued Mayor Larry Vaughn for endangering public safety and the manslaughter of her son. She never expected a guilty verdict to be handed out by the court. She knew Larry had powerful friends and that he would dance the magic dance of 'unforeseeable events' and reiterate 'I was only working in the public's best interest'. Through her knowledge of litigation she understood the only way to hand out real, lasting justice was to destroy Larry's image, piece by piece. The private investigators she hired soon discovered the obvious, cliché affair he had been engaging in with this secretary, and she saw to it that the papers ran wet and wild with the story. A quick assessment of his business transactions added another nail into his political coffin, when it was revealed funds had been squirreled away in his wife's off shore bank account. Destroying him really wasn't hard - an anosmatic pitbull could have sniffed out Larry's lazy tracks. When all was said and done he left town with a target tattooed on his back and a small suitcase of his best suits. She followed his career afterwards for a couple of years, just to make sure he didn't get a second wind in politics. Right now he works, appropriately, as a used car salesman on the mainland. She visited him once a few years ago, pretending to be interested in a rusty Cadillac he was trying to flog. They spoke for thirty minutes but he didn't recognize her at all.
Had her hatred changed her identity so much? You hear often about the stew of pain, how it bubbles and tenderizes a person until their own reflection is the face of a stranger. The years had certainly done their best work on Lee. Her pale tissue paper skin, cracked open like broken ice, and her scalp of once thick brown locks was now virtually bald. She was bitter. Bitter with Amity, angry against its people and vengeful towards Sharks. Oh yes, the Sharks. These creatures, who they say have survived millions of years of evolution, are now given protection, given the right to survive and feast on the top of the food chain like humans where meal deals. Before those various animal protection society's shut her down, Lee paid out frequent bounty's on the animals, helping other mothers who like her had lost their kin to these eating machines. Fishermen loved her - they practically depended on her payouts to survive the financial year. She only went on a hunt once, where after a three-hour pursuit they reeled in two ten-foot Tiger sharks. The captain slit open their bellies and a hundred babies spilled onto the decks. She didn't concern herself thinking about the obvious irony, she just didn't go back on a hunt. It was as if all this time and money was spent trying to kill that one animal that would finally bring justice to Alex. The right monster, the right shark.
Out of the whole affair she felt regret towards only one person. Chief Martin Brody. The man who she first slapped (quiet literally) responsibility on for her son's death, soon turned out to be the only town official who took any action. She didn't quiet believe the wild stories of how he single handedly blew apart the beast with a rifle and a scuba tank - Martin himself never spoke of the matter - but it was the undeniable guilt that clung to his face whenever she saw him that soothed Lee's hatred. She had even offered to pay him the three-thousand dollars reward, after those drunken sea hands pulled in the wrong animal, but he politely refused and asked only for her forgiveness. To mark the year anniversary of the Amity Victims, Brody organized a special memorial service out of his own pocket. He gave a quite gracious speech about unity and the unforgettable legacy this event held in all of our hearts. After the administration changed hands there was even talk of him running for Mayor, but he knew better than to dive into that pit of snakes. Besides the writing was already on the wall: Amity Island was bankrupt. The town's money, thanks mostly to Leigh, was being decanted into fifty different corruption charges and public endangerment cases. Tourists soon came to know the place by another name - Shark City – and they too evaporate along with their economic contribution. The only people making money on the Island now were the two men who went around boarding up store windows and doors. The collapse was as gradual and unstoppable as the tide.
Lee spent her last day in Town driving around the now abandoned streets, the sun setting in her rearview mirror. She pulled over on the hillside where the graffiti Amity billboard stood, and looked down on a town with nothing to show for all its effort, a place that would limp on for years to come, never to truly recover. All thanks to her.
"Get out of the water!" She shouted at the tall boy with the hazel eyes, which turned the color of stone when he saw this frightening witch-like woman raging towards him. Another lad, presumably the leader of this troupe, stepped out in front of his friends, ready to teach Lee the life lesson of minding her own business. "What you want you old…", She delivered one of her trademark left handers directly on the upstarts' young, tender cheek. He kneeled over to the side and his two friends bolted for the safety of the sand dunes, leaving him and the spotty faced darer behind. Lee's harrowing expression drew the child from the water like a magnet causing him to dash from the ocean as fast as his numb legs could carry him.
The injured leader straightened himself up, one hand still clenching his throbbing jaw. "You crazy bitch. I'll get my father on you." Just managing to hold back the brink of tears. Looking into his tight face dragged up all that old hatred stored deep inside Lee's inner core. She saw the same obnoxious, unempathic features that defined the whole attitude of this town. "Do you have any idea what happened here? Do you know what's out there!". The volume of her voice set a flock of seagulls scattering into the air but the boy remained undeterred. "You mean those stupid Shark stories. That's a load of shit. No one cares about a bunch of idiots who died twenty years ago". Lee couldn't contain her rage and swiped for him again, but this time he ducked, took a running jump into the ocean and started swimming out. After a few strokes he turned back to flip his middle finger, "Come in a get me if you've got the stones!" He declared. Lee shook on the spot her hands and teeth both clenched, "Come back! Get out of the water. It's not safe". In that moment she realized how much this child resembled Alex – he had the same floppy brown hair, the same lean figure braised in a strong tan, he even wore very similar red shorts that Alex had been wearing the day he was taken. These memories of the past contaminated her views of the present and she and called out, "Alex! Alex come back!".
The boy looked back in confusion then continued to paddle out further. He was neck deep when something stopped him mid-flow. As if all the pain in the world had clenched around his lower body, the boy began to scream, scream his bloody head off. Lee's heart dropped the same moment the boy's head dropped beneath the waves, followed by that familiar, heart-pounding silence from 1975. Without even taking the time to remove her shoes or glasses she dived head first into the sea. In her mind her son was out there. She wouldn't let him down again. The adrenaline protected her from the icy temperature as she splashed, kicked and thought her way to where the boy had disappeared. She took a breath and plunged down into the dark depths of nothingness. So black she couldn't even make out a string of seaweed. Breath emptied out of her old battered lungs and she clawed back up to the surface. Above her the world span around in circles as she continued calling his name, looking for any sign of her son. Then, in her stinging vision she saw those same red shorts dancing around on the beach, with a completely intact boy still inside them. His cruel laughing echoed across the bay. His friends reappeared from the dunes to take in the sight of this pathetic, water-ridden pensioner, bobbing up and down on the surf. They all had a good laugh and praised their leader's theatrical talents. "Have a good swim bitch", and with that last insult they ran back beyond the beach huts.
Leigh still couldn't get her mind straight about what had happened. Where is Alex? Is he still out here? Yes, he must be. I've got to find him. He'll be so cold by now. His hands will prune, they always did prune so badly. Her hands fell to her sides and she let the ocean water flood over her head. Back in the blackness she searched again, still finding nothing. From within the void a sudden shape came rushing towards her so quick that all she could register were it's two huge-doll eyes and it's very large jaws.