As a recently hired reporter for the less than successful business magazine called None of Your Business, I was given the assignments no one else wanted. That was why I found myself in the village of Butt, Texas in the middle of August, sweating like a fat woman dancing to an old Richard Simmons tape. My magazine was doing a story on prosperous small towns in the United States, and I was in Butt to interview Buckington Butt III, the grandson of its founder.

As I pulled my rented Yugo with the malfunctioning air conditioner into the parking lot of Ristorante de Butt, I noticed a man and woman having a heated argument three spaces from where I parked. He grabbed her around the shoulders and shook her as I tried to squeeze from the confines of my puny square car. “Do you need any help, Ma’am?” I asked.

“Mind your own business, John Wayne,” the man said loudly. “Nice car, by the way. I’d respect you more if you rode up on a slump-back old nag.”

“No thanks, Mister,” the sexy brunette said. “This asshole’s the one that needs the help. I’ll be back the same time next week and you’d better have an answer for me.” She poked her finger into the big man’s chest, stepped her shiny red heels into her black Porsche 911 and burned rubber out of the parking lot.

“Women,” the man said, turning toward me. “You can’t live with ‘em and they won’t pee standin’ up. Shit! Somethin’ I can do for you, Mister?”

The man was taller than I first thought, and built like a fisherman from my native Egegik, Alaska, with shoulder-length, black hair and piercing blue eyes. He sported cutoff denim jeans and a wife beater t-shirt to show off his impressive physique.

“No,” I said. “I’m here to see Mr. Butt, the owner of this place.”

“Well, this is your lucky day,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m him. Buckington Butt the third, but just call me Buckington. We’re not very formal around here.”

I was slightly taken aback by the appearance of one of the richest men in America, expecting a tailored suit and Gucci shoes. What I saw was a man ready to wrestle alligators in the swamps of Texas. “Richard Hare,” I stammered, “from None of Your Business magazine. I’m here to interview you.”

“Well, hell, I thought that was next month,” Buckington said. “I can’t remember shit with all I got on my mind. Where do you wanna do this?”

“Preferably in the air conditioning,” I said, reaching for my briefcase. “I’m from Alaska and start to melt if it gets above eighty degrees.”

“That’s a bummer for you, then,” Buckington said, leading me towards the front door of his restaurant. “It’s usually hot and steamy in Butt, and sometimes smelly too if the wind starts to blow.”

Go Back to The Village of Butt: Act I Excerpts