If you sat long enough at the big round table at Grounds for Divorce, you’d eventually hear every story worth telling twice, and a few that ought to be buried under caliche. This one came in like a dust storm from the north, carried on the back of a certified envelope and the kind of luck that makes honest men suspicious and dishonest ones downright inspired.
It started, as most trouble does, with a Burt.
Not just any Burt, mind you. Wellington R. Burt, dead since 1919 but still managing to stir up more commotion than Mayor Goodman at a ribbon cutting. Lumber baron out of Michigan. Richer than a goat with two tails. Meaner than a snake with a sunburn. When he died, he looked at his children and grandchildren, took a long sip of whatever it is rich men drink when they’re fixing to make a point, and decided they weren’t worth the trouble of spending his money.
So he didn’t.
Left them a trickle. A drip. Enough to keep them alive, not enough to make them comfortable. And then he locked the rest of it away tighter than the liquor cabinet at the Second Baptist Christmas social. The condition? Nobody gets the big pile until every last one of his children and grandchildren is dead and gone.
A will written not with ink, but with spite.
And he waited them all out.
A hundred years later, the last of that generation finally checked out, and like a long-delayed thunderclap, the money came raining down on descendants who didn’t even know what they were standing under.
Which brings us to Fort Stockton.
Bubba Burt didn’t know a thing about Wellington R. Burt, other than the name sounded like somebody who’d either owned a railroad or started a feud that ended one. Bubba was 23, which in Fort Stockton terms meant he was either about to make something of himself or about to double down on a mistake. At the time, it looked like the latter had a comfortable lead.
He lived in a double-wide just off Dickinson Boulevard, the kind of place where the skirting never quite matched and the front steps had been replaced enough times to qualify as a family heirloom. The air conditioner rattled like it owed money, and the whole structure leaned just enough to make you wonder if it was thinking about lying down permanently.
Bubba’s daddy had landed in Fort Stockton years back after what folks politely referred to as “a misunderstanding involving a widow.” The part they didn’t say out loud was that her husband had turned out not to be dead, just inconveniently alive at the wrong moment. After that, Bubba’s daddy kept a low profile and an even lower forwarding address.
Which is why it took a team of New York lawyers, a private investigator, and what had to be a suspicious amount of patience to finally track Bubba down.
The envelope showed up on a Tuesday.
Certified mail. Heavy paper. The kind of thing that doesn’t ask politely to be opened.
Bubba stood there on the porch in his socks, scratching his stomach and squinting at it like it might bite. He carried it inside, sat down at the folding table that had seen better decades, and opened it with a butter knife.
By the time he finished reading, his life had tilted on its axis.
He didn’t whoop. Didn’t holler. Didn’t even smile at first. He just sat there, letting the numbers settle in his head like silt at the bottom of a river.
Then he stood up, walked outside, and looked at his trailer.
“Welp,” he said to nobody in particular, “we had a good run.”
Bluebonnet Savings & Trust noticed the change before anyone else. Bubba went from a line item on the foreclosure list to a man with a deposit large enough to make the manager sit up straighter and use his indoor voice.
He paid off the trailer in cash.
Then, in what could generously be described as a symbolic gesture, he walked around the perimeter with a five-gallon can of diesel, poured a neat circle like he was outlining a crime scene, and struck a match.
Sharon Hudspeth, who had been inside gathering what she considered her share of the situation, came tearing out the front door with a laundry basket and language that would’ve made Hank at the Lucky Lady blush. The gas water heater let go a few seconds later, launching itself through the roof like it had someplace better to be.
It missed her ’63 Cadillac by inches.
Folks would later say that was the first miracle of Bubba’s fortune.
The second one was that he didn’t spend it all in the first week.
He came close.
Now, there are a few places a man goes when he comes into money he doesn’t understand. Some go to Vegas. Some go to a financial advisor. Bubba went to Porsche South Austin.
He drove up in his Camaro, the paint faded in a way that suggested more sun than care, and stepped out like a man arriving at his own misunderstanding. The showroom gleamed. Glass, chrome, and quiet confidence. The kind of place where the floors look expensive and the salesmen look like they’ve never had to ask the price of anything.
That’s where he met Hans.
Hans had the kind of accent that made simple words sound like they required a permit. He took one look at Bubba and saw possibility. Not the cautious, well-researched kind. The other kind. The kind that shows up once in a blue moon and leaves a story behind.
They talked.
Or rather, Hans talked, and Bubba nodded.
When Hans heard about Wellington R. Burt, the will, the waiting, the sheer stubborn poetry of it all, something clicked behind his eyes.
“You vant,” he said, gently guiding Bubba toward a configuration screen that looked like it could launch a satellite, “something… how you say… appropriate.”
That’s when he said it.
“Weissach,” Hans explained, tapping the option with a practiced finger, “is pronounced… ‘Wise Ass.’”
Bubba blinked.
“Like… a smart fella?” he asked.
Hans smiled in a way that could have been sincerity or could have been commission.
“Exactly.”
That was all it took.
Bubba ordered a 2026 Porsche 911 GT3 with the Weissach Package, because if your great-granddaddy spends a century calling his family worthless, the least you can do is show up in something that answers back.
Gentian Blue Metallic. Carbon fiber everything that could legally be made out of it. Lightweight panels, satin weave this, Race-Tex that. A 4.0-liter flat-six that spun to 9,000 rpm like it was trying to outrun history itself. Ceramic brakes the color of caution tape and about as forgiving.
The sticker came to $300,290.
Bubba wrote the check like he was signing for a plate of enchiladas.
Then he tipped Hans ten grand.
“Appreciate you explainin’ all that,” Bubba said.
Hans accepted it with the grace of a man who had just been validated by the universe.
“Porsche,” he said, handing over a cold beer. “There is no substitute.”
Back in Fort Stockton, Bubba became a regular feature.
The Scuttlebutt took to him the way dry ground takes to rain. The Fallen Angels circled, intrigued by a man with more money than sense and a willingness to part with both. Mayor Goodman installed a second ATM next to the Make Fort Stockton Horny lap dance rooms, citing “economic development” and a need to keep local currency circulating.
Bubba waited for the call.
When it came, he was mid-afternoon, mid-situation, and mid-decision he probably shouldn’t have been making. He untangled himself from all three, grabbed his keys, and pointed the Camaro toward Austin with a determination usually reserved for escaping wildfires.
Three hundred thirty-seven miles.
A little over three hours.
The Camaro did not enjoy the experience, but it endured it.
Hans was waiting.
The GT3 sat there under the lights like it had been carved out of intent. Low. Sharp. All angles and purpose. The carbon fiber stripe ran over the hood, across the roof, and into that swan-neck wing like a signature.
“Weissach,” Hans said again, as if introducing them.
Bubba ran a hand along the fender.
“Wise ass,” he corrected, with confidence.
Hans nodded.
“Ja.”
The drive back to Fort Stockton became legend before he even got there.
Rear-axle steering making the car feel like it was thinking ahead of him. The PDK snapping through gears faster than Bubba could form a complete thought. The engine note climbing and climbing until it sounded less like machinery and more like a dare.
He hit the outskirts just as the sun was dropping behind the horizon, the sky doing that West Texas thing where it looks like God spilled a box of crayons and didn’t bother to clean it up.
He rolled down Dickinson.
Heads turned.
At Grounds for Divorce, the usual suspects were already in place. Lucinda behind the counter, moving with the kind of efficiency that comes from knowing exactly how much nonsense she’s willing to tolerate. Rusty at the table, holding court. Rex nursing a coffee like it owed him money. Chad somewhere in the middle of a sentence about margins.
The sound hit first.
That flat-six howl bouncing off storefronts and settling into the bones of the place.
Bubba pulled up out front, the car idling like it had better things to do but was willing to wait.
He stepped out.
For a moment, nobody said anything.
Then Rusty leaned back in his chair, took a slow look from Bubba to the car and back again.
“Well,” he said, “ain’t that just a couple wise asses meetin’ in the same parking spot.”
Laughter rolled through the place.
Bubba grinned, proud in a way that didn’t require understanding.
Chad stepped outside, circling the car with a mixture of awe and concern.
“You know what that thing’ll do?” he asked.
Bubba nodded.
“Spend money,” he said.
That wasn’t wrong.
Over the next few weeks, Bubba learned the limits of both the car and himself, often at the same time. The front-axle lift saved him from more than one unfortunate encounter with Fort Stockton’s interpretation of road maintenance. The ceramic brakes introduced him to the concept of consequences.
The car was perfect.
Bubba was not.
But in a town like this, perfection was never the point.
It was about the story.
And this one had all the right ingredients. Old money. New mistakes. A century of patience undone in a handful of weeks.
One night, after the initial shine had worn down just enough to reveal the edges, Bubba sat at the counter at Grounds for Divorce, staring into a cup of coffee he hadn’t touched.
Lucinda slid into the space across from him.
“You done yet?” she asked.
“Done what?”
“Spendin’ it.”
He shrugged.
“Don’t know how,” he admitted.
She nodded, like she’d been expecting that.
“You ever think,” she said, “your great-granddaddy might’ve been onto somethin’?”
Bubba frowned.
“He called us all worthless.”
Lucinda leaned in, just enough to make the point land.
“Well aren’t you a waste of two billion years of evolution.”
He blinked.
Across the room, Trixie snorted into her drink.
“An erection is not considered personal growth,” she added, looking straight at him.
The place went quiet for a beat, then erupted.
Bubba sat there, caught somewhere between offense and realization, the weight of a hundred years settling into something he could finally feel.
Outside, the GT3 cooled under the streetlight, ticking softly as the heat bled out of it.
Inside, Bubba Burt took his first real look at what he’d been handed.
Not just the money.
The chance to do something with it.
Or not.
In Fort Stockton, that choice mattered more than the car parked out front.
Even if it was a hell of a car.
2 responses to “A COUPLE WISE ASSES”
Well, WTF — That was abrupt! More to come on the disposition of Bubba’s megabucks, Captain?
There are so many choices, angles, decisions, emotions, outcomes, stories, novels, poems, real-life – that can be ground out of this “Story.” You hit the real gusher here cap!