Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 103, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 625 & 626, March 1994

A Matter of Principle by Seymour Shubin

© 1994 by Seymour Shubin

Wynnewood, Pennsylvania resident Seymour Shubin has a new satire for us that will probably strike a chord with users of the Northeast’s beaches — and anyone who gets hung up on a matter of principle...

I don’t know what got into Midge after all these years, three years to be exact, about the beach badges. After all, we’d been buying them all this time. But now, the first day of our first weekend of the season, as we walked to the beach and saw the sign that said you could buy the badges at the little kiosk outside the township police station or from the “beach-badge girl” who patrolled the beaches, Midge said, “It’s all wrong, I’m not going to do it.”

Actually I’d been hearing this from the time they’d first introduced beach badges here.

“Beaches should be free, they should belong to everyone. It’s a disgrace; they put a gun to your head to let you use Nature’s beach and ocean.”

But we would always buy them — “season” badges, since we rented a room almost every weekend, and it came out cheaper than the daily or weekly badges. But almost immediately after we would come on the beach, Midge would point out all the people who didn’t have badges displayed on them.

This time, though, there was something in her voice, her look, that said she really meant it.

“We’re not doing it this year, Harry. It’s really become a matter of principle.”

“Midge, I don’t need this aggravation.”

“Don’t be a doormat, Harry.”

So we walked down the hot, thick sand of the path through the dune, to the even hotter sand of the beach, and I set up our chairs and spread out the blanket and put in the beach umbrella, working it back and forth until it was in there deep. And Midge, who never burned, sat down away from the umbrella, with her little stack of women’s magazines, while I put my chair under it and applied, I think, #45 sunblock, though I’d read that the most you really needed was 15.

Once in a while, almost against my will, I would bring my chair out from under the umbrella, but soon would go back under. I still resented what she’d said once, though it was years ago, but had implied many times since, that the only reason I burned was that my mind let it happen.

From the shade of the umbrella, I took in the scattering of groups on the beach, the partly submerged rock jetty under some circling seagulls, the rounding and crash of waves, the widely spread houses whose wooden decks overlooked it all from beyond the dunes. But I was really looking for the beach-badge girl; I had barely glanced at my book.

I saw her about twenty minutes later. There was a different girl each year, but in some ways they were always the same: they’d spend most of the time by the lifeguard stand, staring up and talking to them. Like the others, this one had a bag filled with beach badges slung from her shoulder. She was touching at her hair and smiling at the lifeguards and once threw her head back in laughter as one of them bent down to her to say something. Then she began her walk, first in the opposite direction from us, then back along the edge of the ocean, a little distance away.

Midge said, “Don’t look at her.”

“Midge, you don’t have to look at her, she’ll be over. Do you have money?”

“Harry, I’m not paying until I have to. Don’t look at her.”

“But what do we say if she comes over?”

“We left them at the house.”

“But we’ll have to get ’em sooner or later.”

“Look,” Midge said, “she’s not even coming this way.”

It was true. She stopped at a few clusters of people by the surf, then walked on past us.

“But she’ll be coming back,” I said.

“Harry, don’t be a wimp. Look at all these people without badges.”

“Where? Where? I don’t see one.”

“You remember last year. That guy with the moustache? He never had one, the whole summer.”

I never could recall seeing that guy, though half the summer last year Midge would nod toward someone and say look, look, he doesn’t have a badge.

Anyway, I gave a fast look back over my shoulder, and the badge girl, with her short blond hair and little bikini, was still heading away, stopping now and then by people, and once in a while giving out badges and making change and conversation.

My heart was really going. I’d been a trial lawyer almost twenty-five years and I don’t remember it ever going harder even right before a trial.

I just about buried my face in my book, as though to hide from the world, then looked over my shoulder again.

“Midge, she’s coming, here she comes.”

“Let’s go in the water.” Midge was already rising.

“Midge, I don’t feel like going in the water.”

“Then buy a badge,” she said, starting to walk off. “But don’t buy two.”

I got up and followed her. The water almost froze my left foot the instant I inserted it, and it wasn’t any better when I tried it with my right foot. The lifeguards were staring out, so I went in just deep enough to cover the badge on my trunks, if I’d had one. Everyone around me was jumping and diving and body-surfing the waves back to the beach. From what I could see, every one of them had beach badges. Midge was dunking.

I waited until the girl was back at the lifeguard stand before I headed out, going on a sharp diagonal from her toward our chairs. Midge came back and dried herself briskly. A few minutes later here came the badge girl, right to us. She gave us a big smile.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” said Midge, and I smiled.

“Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

“Oh, it’s gorgeous,” Midge said. And then Midge asked her if she knew what happened to last year’s badge girl, and the girl said she’d heard that she was taking summer courses; and Midge wanted to know did she herself go to school, and she said yes, Penn State, she was a junior, she was thinking of becoming a vet.

They must have talked for ten minutes, during which time the girl said her name was Ann, and her parents were divorced, and this was a wonderful job though it didn’t pay much, but the people were so nice. She never asked about beach badges, except with her eyes as she was about to go; and Midge said, “Oh my, I just remembered, we left our badges at the house.”

Ann smiled as she said, starting to walk away, “Real nice talking to you. I’ll talk to you again.”

I watched her walk off, her little behind swinging just enough. “Midge,” I said, finally turning to her, “for God’s sake, it would cost us all of ten dollars apiece. For the whole summer.”

“I’m not going to give them the satisfaction until I have to.”

“I’m embarrassed. I can’t relax.”

“What’re they going to do to you? Put you in jail? If you have to, you’ll buy one. But wait till you have to. I’m telling you, look at all these people.”

But I still couldn’t see one person without a badge.

We left the beach a little after five; Ann had never returned in all that time. But the next day all the anxiety was back as I walked toward the beach. Again Ann was over with the lifeguards, chatting up at them and laughing.

This time when I saw her beginning her approach I turned over on the blanket, on my stomach, my face under my folded arms. My heart was popping up at me, but above it I could hear the exchange of hi’s, and something more about what a nice day, and then Midge chastising herself, “Would you believe I still left mine at the house? Oh dear, I don’t know if Harry brought his.”

“Don’t wake him. I’ll be back.”

As Ann retreated, I glared across my arm at Midge.

“I think,” she said, “I’ll go in the water.”

Watching her walk off, I made up my mind the hell with her, I’m buying one for myself. But as Ann headed back toward us about an hour later, while Midge was settled in her chair with a beach towel spread over her, as though her badge might be under it, I walked quickly to the house.

Once in a while I’d get up from the damn TV in the shadowed room and stare out the window toward the beach at the end of the sun-gilded street.

Midge came back a few hours later.

“Why’d you leave? It was so beautiful out.”

Why’d I leave, why’d I leave? Like last night, like a million things. Why didn’t I wear the tan slacks I’d started to put on until she noticed?

“You know something?” she called to me later, after she stepped out of the shower. “I love this place so much, when I die I’d like my ashes scattered on the ocean here. Promise me.”

Something had never come into my mind, at least my conscious mind, until that moment.

I brought the ashes the following summer, in a perfectly cleaned-out mayonnaise jar. I had a beach badge on my trunks, as did Joanne on the hip-curve of her scant bikini. They were in fact the first things I bought when we drove onto the island, and Joanne, the young blond widow of a former client of mine, was even good enough to get out of the car for me and go up to the kiosk to make the transaction.

“Actually I hate these,” she said as she got back in the car. “I think the beaches should be free.”

“Oh,” I said, “I think they serve a good purpose.”

A little later, sitting with her under the umbrella after we’d applied sunblock to each other, I told her I wanted to collect some shells. She walked with me, all innocence and beauty, that little behind swaying, and may even have watched me as I dipped the jar in the surf to rinse it out.