Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
“I love this song!” I cranked it up and hammered the steering wheel of Bertha like it was a set of war drums. My right foot pressed heavily on the gas as we flew down the interstate, the Mississippi pines blurring into the swampy, moss-draped tangles of Louisiana.
“Too loud!” Sylvie reached over and turned the radio back down. “And slow down! All this bouncing is hurting my tattoo.”
“Mine too!” Doris called.
“Ninnies.” I ignored the sting on my own ass cheek while I tapped the wheel to the beat of Tom Petty, singing loudly as it hit the chorus.
“Oh, my ears,” Alice grumbled from the booth behind me.
“You weren’t blessed with a great singing voice, Marge,” Doris added.
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.
“Okay, I love this place,” Doris whispered, looking around with wide eyes. “It smells Heavenly in here.”
“I see you ogling her apron. Don’t go stealing it.”
Doris scoffed. “I would never steal!” Then she looked over at Mawmaw. “But it is lovely! Would be quite a piece in the Apron Museum.”
“It’s pretty cool,” Sylvie agreed, studying the menu. “Definitely feels like we’re in the authentic South now.”
“You know what I just realized,” I whispered, leaning over the table. “This is True Blood territory.”
“What are you talking about?” Alice scrunched up her face.
Sylvie chuckled. “The show. True Blood. It’s about vampires in a town that, well, she’s right… looks a lot like this one.”
I softly slapped the table. “See? Sylvie gets it.”
“Gets what?” Doris’s eyes got big.
“That this place is teeming with vampires. Gotta be.”
Doris’s big eyes got bigger. “What?”
Sylvie touched Doris’s hand. “She’s teasing, Doris. There aren’t any vampires here.”
I scanned the room, my gaze landing on a guy wearing a camouflage hat at the bar. He had dark hair, a rugged jawline, and a look of permanent mystery. “Look at him. Ten to one he’s a vampire.”
They all peered over at him.
“Stop it, Marge. No such thing as vampires,” Doris whispered, but fear bloomed in her eyes.
I gestured at the general atmosphere. “Lot of vampire lore down here. Old Creole stuff, voodoo, all of it.” I looked around the diner with genuine appreciation.
“Marge,” Alice scolded. “You’re scaring Doris.”
I leaned forward on my elbows. “This is actually perfect. We should look into getting Alice bitten while we’re here. Solve the whole cancer situation in one go.”
Alice looked at me over her menu. “I’m not becoming a vampire.”
“You wouldn’t have cancer.”
“I’d be dead.”
“Undead,” I corrected. “And undead is better than dead.”
“Oh! Wait. Becoming a vampire means eternal beauty, right?” Alice sat up a little taller. “Maybe I am interested.”
Doris practically shrieked but leaned forward, hushing her panicked voice. “Vampires are demons! We cannot get turned into vampires or I’ll never get into Heaven! No! Absolutely not!”
Sylvie laughed. “Don’t worry, Doris. I don’t think you need to be afraid of us turning into vampires. You’ve already got enough to worry about trying to save our souls.”
Doris pointed a finger at each of us. “I’m serious, girls. If it turns out vampires are real, none of you had better get turned. There’s no way I can convince God to let a vampire into Heaven no matter how good I am!”
“It’s a genuine option and I think we should explore it.
” I looked around the diner. “That guy—” I tipped my chin toward a man sitting at the counter, his back to us, broad shoulders under a flannel shirt.
“Bet he’d bite you for a few bucks. Saw his face when we walked in.
He’s a looker, so it wouldn’t even be that unpleasant. ”
Sylvie smirked. “He is rather good-looking in that rugged kind of way.”
“Too good-looking,” I noted. “For this middle-of-nowhere diner? Suspicious. I’m telling you… vampire.”
“Marge, stop.” Doris clutched her menu like a prayer book.
Mawmaw appeared, dropping a batch of warm biscuits on the table and setting down four glasses of water. “Can I get you anything to drink?”
We ordered our drinks, and she left to get them with a smile.
“See how quiet she was? Barely heard her coming. I’m not saying Mawmaw is a vampire. I’m saying she could be, and I respect it. She seems nice. Bet she’d turn Alice if the dude at the bar doesn’t turn out to be a vamp.”
“Marge!” Sylvie bumped me with an elbow.
“I’m serious! If we get Alice bitten, the cancer is a nonissue. Boom. Immortal. We’d just have to keep her out of the sun or buy her a lot of sunscreen. Problem solved!”
“We do not need to turn her into a vampire,” Doris scolded, her eyes wide.
“I’ve been praying, Marge. Enough for four, plus extra prayers for Alice.
I’ve got us covered. And besides, when we all die—because we aren’t exactly spring chickens anymore—it’s fine.
I am confident now that I can get you all into Heaven. So, you don’t need to be immortal.”
I shrugged, tearing into a warm, flaky biscuit.
I popped it into my mouth and spoke between chews.
“Think about how ancient we are. In the Middle Ages, hitting forty was like winning the lottery. We’re basically prehistoric.
Old enough we could have been on Noah’s Ark, for crying out loud.
I’m just trying to upgrade us to ‘eternal.’”