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  • Peter Benchley Is Dead
  • Shane Borrowman (bio)

The museums in children’s minds, I think, automatically empty themselves in times of utmost horror—to protect the children from eternal grief.

—Kurt Vonnegut, Slapstick or Lonesome No More!

I’m screaming myself awake, fighting against the light blanket and kicking at the dog. Sweat pours down the sides of my face and down my back. The sheets beneath me are wet, as is the pillowcase. I fell asleep watching Jaws on DVD, watching the thirtieth anniversary edition, the theme song playing as Sheriff Brody fires wildly at the rapidly approaching shark. The DVD is new, a gift from my wife, but its effect on me is not.

When composer John Williams wrote this basically two-note sequence, penned under the snappy name “Main Title and First Victim,” he probably had no idea that his simple piece would win an Oscar for Best Original Score. He couldn’t know how deeply it would scar and scare both a tiny boy in Montana and an entire generation of movie-watching former swimmers.

For more than three decades it soundtracked my dreams.

I feel my heart beating in my wrists. My eyes throb. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt my heartbeat in such an obvious, almost painful way. I can hear a ringing in my ears. This all scares me in a middle-aged way I’m not ready for at this time of night.

I force my way out of the tangled sheets with rapid, angry motions and pad barefoot and bare-chested to the bathroom where I get a drink of water, using the purple cap from my shaving cream as a cup. The water won’t get cold no matter how long I wait, so I drink three or four warm capfuls and go back to bed, slapping the television’s “off" button as I pass. [End Page 83]

My wife holds me: “What was it? Do you want to talk about it?”

I’m not sure if I’ve ever answered these linked questions, although she asks every time. I’m not sure if I’m going to answer now until I do: “It was Stacie. She was in my closet, and I could hear her calling my name. I knew she was dead.”

I roll onto my stomach and try to think of something else. Of someone else. But it’s dark, and I can still feel myself sweating, and the dream is very real.

I don’t think about Stacie very often. I dream about her, though. Until now I never thought she scared me. Not after she was dead.

In the picture from Christmas morning 1975, Stacie and I stand back to back, maybe a foot of space between us. We’re both holding a newly opened present. Mine is a Tin Woodsman, a 12-inch action figure from The Wizard of Oz. He’s mostly a gray blur in my hands, still wrapped in plastic. Stacie’s got the best present of the day, however: a poster from the movie Jaws, one that shows the shark swimming directly at the viewer, tooth-filled mouth gaping. The poster’s been unrolled like a large scroll, and she’s displaying it for the camera—and looking over her own shoulder and down at me.

Stacie’s almost 11, while I’m only a few weeks into being five. We’ve both been obsessed with the movie Jaws since it opened the past summer. She loves Jaws and is utterly unafraid, willing to water-ski and fish at Georgetown Lake and to swim in any water without nervousness. Her bravery astounds me, and my own fears of water and the possibilities of violent death are put to rest in the shadow of her courage.

Once the presents are all opened, she’ll have another poster, this one the lobby-print that shows the shark shooting straight upwards at the nubile young swimmer; a game simply called Jaws; and a vinyl record titled Jaws of the Shark.

Stacie and I listen to Jaws of the Shark constantly, turning off the lights and sitting close in the dark. The...

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