April 1932
It was Ruth’s idea to “borrow” my papa’s Packard to go exploring on the island. At thirteen, she was the oldest, and the bossiest. I was still twelve, and Millie, whose birthday wasn’t until the last week of August, was the baby of the group. That was the night the High Tide Club was born.
We were on spring break from boarding school, having taken the train down from Boston a good five days before the rest of the family would join us.
With the run of the house mostly to ourselves and largely unsupervised, we’d spent the week listening to the radio, playing endless hands of canasta, and taking turns reading aloud from the naughty parts of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which we’d found hidden in my mother’s lingerie drawer.
It was the night before my parents and Gardiner were to arrive.
“I’m bored. Let’s go for a drive.” Ruth jumped up and ran down the stairs with Millie and me trailing along behind. We followed her out to the barn, which had once held racehorses but now housed Papa’s “island cars”—a disreputable-looking collection of automobiles that had outlived their useful lives back at home in Boston but were still well suited for life on Talisa.
Ruth jumped into the front seat of the Packard. Once, when it had been Mama’s favorite car for shopping jaunts, it had been shiny and black with gleaming chrome trim and soft leather upholstery. But now the windshield was missing, along with the bumpers. The leather was cracked, and the chrome was pitted from exposure to the salt air.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I stood in front of the Packard’s blazing headlamps, my hands on my hips. Somehow, Ruth had managed to start the motor. And now, she blasted the car’s horn so loudly Millie and I both jumped, and a chicken, who’d been roosting up in the rafters of the barn, squawked and flapped down onto the sawdust-covered floor.
“Let’s go!” Ruth said, tapping on the horn again.
“But … but…,” Millie sputtered. “You can’t drive. You’re not old enough.”
“I’m plenty old enough,” Ruth retorted. “I’ve been driving for ages and ages. My sister, Rose, taught me how.”
That was good enough for me. I opened the door and swung onto the front seat.
Millie stared at the two of us, trying to make us be sensible. “What if somebody finds out? We could get in a lot of trouble.”
Ruth was rummaging around in the glove box, but she looked up, annoyed. “Pfffft. Who’s going to tell on us? We have the whole island all to ourselves.”
“That’s not true,” Millie said stubbornly. “Mrs. Dorris is here, and the rest of the servants, and the colored people who run the commissary, and the man who brought us over on the boat…”
“Mrs. Dorris goes to bed at seven o’clock, and the rest of the servants had better mind their own business or I’ll tell Papa to fire them,” I said, which I never would have done, and Papa wouldn’t have fired anybody on my say-so anyway, but Millie didn’t know that.
“Lookie here!” Ruth cried. She was holding up a clear pint bottle with a brownish liquid. “Hooch!”
“Ruth Mattingly, don’t you dare,” Millie said.
So of course, Ruth uncapped the bottle, sniffed, and took a chug. She coughed and gagged, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and handed the bottle to me. I pretended to drink, then tucked it under the seat for safekeeping.
“Are you coming or not?” Ruth asked. “Scaredy-cat!”
Millie barely had one foot in the Packard before Ruth jammed the car into reverse, stomped on the gas, and shot us backward out of the barn.
“Slow down!” Millie pleaded as the Packard lurched forward over the narrow asphalt road the islanders called Dixie Highway. But Ruth just laughed and sped up, and soon the wind was whipping our hair, and the headlamps shone yellow white in the inky darkness.
“Where shall we go?” Ruth turned to me for directions. It was only her second time on Talisa, but I’d been coming to the island my whole life.
That’s when I had the brilliant idea. I pointed ahead, toward a huge three-trunked live oak tree that marked a split in the road. “Take a left, just up there. We’ll go down to Mermaid Beach.”
Without slowing down, Ruth veered so sharply left we almost left the road, and as it was, a low-hanging limb from the tree scraped the Packard’s roof and right side, in the process depositing a long, lacy strand of spanish moss in Millie’s lap.
“Hey!” I protested. “You almost put us in a ditch.”
But Ruth just cackled with that demonic laugh of hers.
Millie planted both hands on the dashboard to brace herself. “Look! There’s something up ahead, in the road.”
Ruth slammed on the brakes, and the three of us watched as a five-foot-long alligator, its eyes glowing yellow orange, ran across the road.
Millie’s screech echoed in the thick night air, but Ruth soon resumed driving.
The asphalt gave out without warning, and then we were in the wildest part of our wild island. The road was a narrow, haphazard trail of crushed shells, and wax myrtles, palmettos, and oak trees crowded against the side of the Packard, the palm fronds slashing at the sides of the car.
“Where are we?” Millie asked. She clutched my hand, and I clutched hers back, trying to act braver than I felt, partly because I had never been to Mermaid Beach at night but mostly because my thirteen-year-old best friend was driving my papa’s Packard, at night, in the dark.
“It’s not far now,” I said, pointing toward the place a hundred yards ahead where the road seemed to disappear in a green curtain of underbrush.
*
“Stop here,” I told Ruth. “We’ll have to walk the rest of the way.”
But she didn’t stop until the Packard was ensnared in a tangle of wisteria and morning glory vines.
Leaves and twigs rained down on our heads as we gingerly stepped out of the car.
“I don’t like this,” Millie said, gripping the door handle. “I’m staying right here.”
“Okay. Fine by me.” Ruth set out ahead of us, stabbing at the underbrush with a thick branch she’d picked up. “Go away, snakes!”
“Come on,” I urged Millie, grabbing her hand. “It’s not that much farther.”
The thick, humid air closed in on us, and as we pushed through the vines, we stirred up clouds of stinging, swarming mosquitoes.
“Aaagggghhh!” Millie cried.
The skeeters were in our hair, our mouths, our noses.
“Let’s run,” I urged. So we did, lunging through the green curtain toward a clearing I prayed was right where it had been during my last trip here, in the daytime, with my brother, Gardiner.
Ruth stopped short at the point where the tunnel opened up to a shimmering platinum world.
She flung her arms wide as though to embrace the spectacle and make it her own.
“Wow,” she breathed.
Millie and I stood beside her, breathless from the run.
The wide sandy beach ran down to the Atlantic Ocean, and a huge full moon shone down from a black velvet sky. It was high tide, and the silver-streaked rollers broke just inches from our feet.
“What is this magic place?” Ruth asked, slipping out of her shoes and digging her toes into the cool white sand.
“We call it Mermaid Beach,” I said, plopping down on the sand to untie my shoelaces.
“It’s wonderful,” Millie said. She tilted her head back and gazed up at the sky. “Have you ever seen a moon so big and beautiful?”
“It’s called the king moon,” I told my friends, feeling important at possessing such knowledge. “I think it only happens once or twice a year.”
I glanced at Ruth, expecting her to ridicule or contradict me, but to my astonishment, she was busily unbuttoning her cotton blouse. She dropped it onto the sand and unfastened the gingham skirt she’d dressed in that morning, and soon it joined the blouse.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m going swimming,” she said, leaning forward to unfasten the brassiere she’d just begun wearing earlier that spring.