Page 10 of The High Tide Club
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.
“But you don’t have a swimsuit,” Millie said.
“I don’t need a swimsuit. I’ve got my birthday suit.” Ruth dropped the brassiere, and next came her panties. She danced toward the waves, wiggling her bare bottom the way we’d seen the sideshow hootchy-kootchy girls do when the carnival came to town. She glanced back at us, over her shoulder. “Come on, you prissy-pants!”
