My love for Roy Scheider blossomed slowly, like a cloud of blood in the water. While other girls pined for Jonathan Brandis, Scheider's late-career co-star in the horrible television series SeaQuest DSV, I had eyes only for Roy. He was a complete dreamboat, a fact that the obituary pages conspicuously failed to mention after the actor, best known for his role as Chief Martin Brody in the Jaws movies, died earlier this week. He was 75.
Yes, Scheider had a boxer's zigzagging nose, and his skin - especially in later years - resembled a baked potato's. But what do you want from a man who spent his summers beneath Amity Island's scorching sun, keeping watch over all of us? He was handy with one-liners, not to mention with tanks of pressurized air. He knew how to make everyone smile - especially Jaws.
When I was an intern at The Southampton Press in New York seven years ago, the other reporters detected my crush as though with a fishfinder, then thumb-tacked Scheider's portrait above my desk. For the whole summer, he beamed down at me, brown-skinned, beatific. Someone later drew a speech bubble near his mouth, and for once The Chief was not made to say, "We're going to need a bigger boat." Instead, he murmured, "Abby is my sweet suga."
Roy was on my mind more than usual that summer. For one thing, he lived right there in the Hamptons, and was sighted at various charity functions and gourmet delis, though never, alas, by me. Also, the Hamptons are a community surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, and I am terrified of that ocean, and indeed all oceans and even some large lakes, thanks to the blood-billowing blockbusters that made Scheider a legend. My parents (who in the mid-1970s went looking for bits of the blown-up mechanical shark off Martha's Vineyard) allowed me to see the film when I was 5 years old. Thus, long before I learned to read, I observed Jaws nipping off limbs and savoring torsos and belly-flopping onto fishing boats. For years, I couldn't eat liquid-center candies without remembering the demise of poor Quint.
And I still can't set foot in the sea without consciously surrendering myself to death. I know that at any moment I will feel the exploratory bump of the brute's nose - oh yes, I studied shark-attack patterns extensively in elementary school, where I delivered some of the goriest book reports in library history. On vacation, friends occasionally succeed in dragging my tragic self into the surf. More often, though, I just stand ankle-deep, arms crossed as the summer sun coaxes, contemplating the curse of what I know.
Chief Brody, though - he was a life force, a guy to be counted on. He was the only member of the Orca triumvirate both man enough and alive enough to return to face Jaws 2.
And he did so even though he, like me, was afraid.
He had very good reason to be. He had seen the severed arm in the sand dunes and felt the bereaved mother's slap upon his leathery cheek. A true landlubber, he despised the duty that time after time took him down to the water, where he saw a shark in every shadow and a fin in every crest. But he did not falter. He plunged right in, and I worshiped him for it.
Midway through my summer in the Hamptons, someone struck upon a brilliant plan. We would invite Roy Scheider to go to the beach with us, then write a story about bathers' reactions. A reporter called to pitch the piece to Scheider, or his people - it was many years after Jaws-fever subsided, and I can't remember if he still worked with an agent.
A few days later, the newsroom phone rang; I, as the intern, answered.
"This is Roy Scheider," a familiar voice said.
The whole newsroom was looking at me; so was Roy, in his smiling picture. My heart beat the Jaws theme. Blood bloomed in my cheeks.
"Hold on," I said.
He had called to refuse our request. I guess a fake beach patrol was beneath his dignity. An actor whose other accomplishments - two Oscar nominations, for starters - were completely overshadowed by his tangles with aggressive marine life, maybe he was sick of the whole briny business. I shouldn't have confused the character and the man.
I wish I could say that Brody will live on after Scheider's death. But as anyone who's seen Jaws: The Revenge knows, The Chief died sometime in the mid-1980s of a heart attack, which, his family later speculated, was brought on by his terror of sharks.
abigail.tucker@baltsun.com