Page 54 of Born to be Wilder

I just sang louder, belting out “I Won’t Back Down” as the three widows cringed.

“Marge, for the love of all that is holy, slow down!” Sylvie shrieked from the passenger seat, her knuckles white as she gripped the dashboard. “The speed limit is seventy! You’re going to get us pulled over!”

I shrugged. “We don’t need to worry about that. We’ve got the cancer card! We get snatched by the po-po and I’ll just have Alice come up, bat those pretty eyelashes, and tell them she has cancer. Boom. Back on the road. Probably give us an armed escort to New Orleans if she flashes them her legs.”

Alice chuckled, a knowing smirk playing on her lips. “She’s not wrong. But seriously, where exactly are we going? Do you even have a destination, or are we just aiming for the ocean and hoping Bertha floats?”

“I dunno,” I said.

“Your plan is… ‘I dunno’?” Sylvie looked at me, eyes worried.

“Relax.” I patted the dashboard. “Bertha and I have an understanding. She’s going to take us somewhere good.”

“Bertha is an inanimate object,” Alice said from behind me.

“Bertha is a vessel of destiny. Our destiny. She knows what she’s doing. Trust the process.”

Sylvie inched up an eyebrow. “Bertha is a rented RV, not KITT from Knight Rider. I really hope you’re not seriously just driving randomly, assuming Bertha knows where she’s going.”

“You gotta trust the road trip magic. I’m letting Bertha pull me toward the next adventure. We’re going off-grid, ladies! Back roads only from here on out.”

“Great.” Alice sighed, leaning her head back. “Straight into the backwoods cannibals.”

“The best road trips happen on back roads. You miss everything on the interstate. Just gas stations and truck stops and the slow death of the American imagination. We’ve made great time and are ahead of schedule, so now we can slow down and enjoy the scenery. I’m not spending my leg as captain staring at the ass of a semi.”

“You’re going to get us lost,” Sylvie said.

“No such thing as lost when you’re just meandering the back roads.”

There was a communal groan, so I cranked up the radio, rolled down the window, and stuck out my arm. The warm, humid air caressed my skin as I swung off the interstate, the highway noise replaced by the rhythmic thump-thump of tires on aging asphalt.

After a while bouncing through the back roads of who-knew-where Louisiana with everyone complaining each rut we hit that their asses hurt due to their new tattoos, we passed a sign that said RUINVILLE, and I slowed down.

“Ruinville?” Alice said. “Is this town really called Ruinville? Good Lord.”

“Who names a town Ruinville?” Doris asked.

“Not someone with a marketing background.” Sylvie laughed.

We rolled down the little main street—a proper town square with a pavilion in the center surrounded by charming little storefronts, an old courthouse with a clock tower, and local townsfolk moseying on about their day. The whole town itself seemed frozen in time, and I considered stopping to explore. But for some reason, my foot didn’t let off the gas, so I took it as a sign Bertha wanted to keep going.

A few miles on the other side of Ruinville, where the road narrowed and it felt like civilization was more of a suggestion than a fact, I saw it.

A diner. Set back from the road in a gravel lot, a large porch running the length of the front, a sign over the door that said MAWMAW’S in red letters. Two pickup trucks and a sedan in the lot.

I pulled in before anyone could object.

“Pit stop!” I announced, killing the engine. “Let’s get some good ol’ fashioned Louisiana grub.”

They didn’t argue but walked behind me looking suspicious as we creaked across the large wooden deck and came to the screen door. I pushed it open, and the most delicious smell slapped me in the face. Coffee and fried food and something sweet, like fresh-baked pie that hadn’t cooled down yet.

“Authentic! This is what I’m talking about!”

A woman appeared from behind the small bar, and she looked like she’d been written into the small-town script almost too on the nose. Round and rosy-cheeked, gray hair pinned up, an apron tied around her well-fed waist. She looked at the four of us standing in her doorway and smiled like she was genuinely glad to see us.

“Well, hey there, ladies! Come on in!” She waved us forward. “I’m Mawmaw. Sit anywhere you like. Be right with ya.”

We slid into a booth by the window, everyone wincing as our tattooed rears hit red vinyl seats. Then we picked up the laminated menus from the worn wood table. This was exactly the kind of place I’d been looking for. The perfect road trip diner. No chains. No corporate branding. Just food that tasted like someone’s grandmother made it because someone’s grandmother had.