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November 4, 1955 Secreted in a thickly forested valley along a crooked gravel road about twenty miles southwest of Kentucky State Route 1691, between Hubnerville and Old Claytown, was a bootlegger joint called The Man-O-War Room. It was built in a remodeled barn that a century earlier had been part of a pioneer way station. Native legend holds that the three-storey structure was built on an ancient Indian burial mound. The local folklore is also rich with accounts of nefarious celebrities such as the Dalton Brothers, Jesse James, John Dillinger, and Al Capone having at one time or another frequented the establishment. The tavern was practically deserted when Adam walked in. The twangy tones of the Hank Williams song Lost Highway resonated in the emptiness of the smoky hall. To the left behind the bar, the proprietor, a very substantial fellow, sporting a patch over his left eye, was using a fly swatter to pluck cobwebs from some of the bottles of strong spirits stored on the uppermost shelves. To the right near the back of the room, at a table beside a popping woodstove, sat a solitary customer. He was funneling vodka and tomato juice from a paper cup and chain-smoking Luckies. It was Mr. Downey. Adam took a spot at the bar. The bartender looked at him. “What do you want?” “Give me a pitcher of whisky.” “Want ice?” “No.” “Alright then.” Presently the bartender returned with a container of bourbon and a crinkled stack of green and white Dixie cups and placed them on the counter in front of Adam. He slid one of the cups off the stack, tapped it three or four times to dislodge the lint inside, then filled it with the pungent volatile amber. “Anything else?” “No.” “Three bucks.” Adam put down a five. “You keep it.” “Thanks Hoss. Here’s some extra cups. They don’t hold up too good with straight whisky.” “Much obliged.” Adam shanked the machine-rolled rim of the half-pint cup onto his powerful bottom lip and crisply dispatched its contents in a single seamless gulp. Just as he put down the freshly evacuated cup, out of the abyss of the room gushed the words: “Keep a close eye on that one barkeep. He’s an oil man. That’s how he operates. First he softens you up with a few big tips and before you know it, you’re hugging the chrome monkey down at Mercy General, pumping out his spawn in a clap bucket.” The bartender grimaced sharply at the uninvited mental visualization of such a wretchedly unwholesome proposition. He then glared fiercely at the source of the impolite commentary and immediately yelled back: “Shut the living hell up over there you. We don’t allow that kind of talk in this store. Sorry sir, he’s new around here.” “Stupid too.” “Yes sir.” Apparently overhearing them, Mr. Downey stood up and approached the bar. The bartender continued to protest loudly. “You better stay put mister, or get the hell out! Watch it sir, he’s coming over here!” “Let him.” In the dialect of modern business, a man in Adam David McCasoway’s profession is known as an energy entrepreneur. In 1955, however, people like him simply were called oil men. Oil man - even today there is a certain idealistic allure to the title. But sadly, its true meaning seems to have been forever lost. It was swept away in one of the many irreversible tidal changes that accompanied the advent of things like geosynchronous satellites, OPEC, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Yet perhaps it’s final sacrificial death blows were arbitrarily delivered upon the brave new altars of such things as postmodernism or compulsory sensitivity training. We may never truly know. There was a time when resourceful men like Adam meandered uninhibited amid the hills and pastures of a hungry continent in search of the golden liquid that built economies, freed enslaved peoples, and animated a century. These men did not rely on the unfeeling computer models of today’s corporate conglomerates. They found oil with instinct and guile and savvy. They found oil by engaging the rock on a personal level, by using their faculties to decipher the mysteries of Mother Earth. And when she mocked their unseasoned overtures they would simply charm the mineral nectar from her supple folds. The secrets they unlocked formed the template of the science that blossomed in the decades after. Algorithms gamboling in the supercomputers of today’s international oil corporations were conceived in the foregoing century by men like Adam McCasoway. Some of these men, like Adam, were heroes who had survived the terrors of WWII. And with their survival came great strength and fearlessness. The kind of strength and fearlessness that enabled them to boldly stake everything on a one-in-fifty chance. To do it every day. The kind of strength and fearlessness needed to bring a roaring gusher under control. Gusher, a nice word for a rabid monster, for the violent wrath of a volcanic dragon constrained 400 maddening, million years. The fearlessness to immerse one’s self in its etheric breath, to risk swift death at the occurrence of a single spark. To inhale, swallow, and thrash in the unctuous amalgam without disinclination or pause. The strength to arrest this power with strong ropes woven not of hemp or jute, but strands of steel. Mr. Downey walked up behind Adam and leaned over and stridently proclaimed in his ear: “I know about you McCasoway. You had me fooled once. But not any more. The first thing I’m gonna do is get your bastard kid sent off to Boys Town. And then I won’t quit until I see you rotting in the penitentiary over in Eddyville.” Again the bartender expressed strong condemnation of this unprovoked injury to the gentle bosom of peace. “Listen mister, you better get the hell out of here or I’m calling the police right now!” “You’re a bootlegger! You ain’t gonna call no damn cops. Take a long walk in Helltown!” Adam remained calm. He decanted another serving of bourbon into a fresh cup and prepared to drink. However, as he raised the container to his mouth, Downey knocked it from his hand spilling the contents across the counter top. “I’m talking to you McCasoway. What, you deaf or something? Or are you just a big chicken?” Adam smiled and nodded subtly. “Okay Downey.”
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Adam stood and faced Mr. Downey. “You’ve got my attention. So, what do you want to talk about? How about starting with the admission that you come from a family of hearse-hounds, pickpockets, and resurrectionists? Or would you be interested in telling the world about that peephole you have in the bathroom at The Wagon Tongue? Would you say you’re sorry for groping your waitresses or cheating them on their time cards? And aren’t you that man who hits women with a blackjack? That’s a really touching and honorable gesture Downey. Did you know that you broke her little baby’s jaw when you kicked Nina in the stomach? The poor little thing can’t eat, they have to feed it through a tube in its stomach...” “...Good, I hope it dies.” “...Would you care to talk about your affair with the undertaker’s daughter, or perhaps apologize for what your boy did to those kids down at the schoolhouse that time? Your family has been nipping the Devil’s pet-baits for years. Maybe it’s time for you to stand tall for them once and for all. What about it?” “You leave my boy out of this!” “I feel sorry for you Downey, I really do.” “I don’t need your stinking sympathy.” Mr. Downey nervously extracted a .38 revolver from his pocket and pointed it at Adam’s face. “I’m gonna to shoot you like a dog McCasoway. You ain’t got no right to talk about my family...” Holding the phone in his hand and dialing, the bartender yelled: “Mister, I’m calling the cops!” “Hey drop the phone liquor boy or you’re gonna get a letter from the gun commission!” Downey then gestured with the pistol toward the bartender. This provided Adam with a momentary opportunity. The first punch was a formidable jab directly to Downey’s mouth. Adam was standing in the ideal position to transfer the full power of his entire upper body into the strike, just like a professional boxer. The result was brutally effective. The pistol was instantly propelled from Downey’s hand as he fell to his knees stunned. Blood jetted from his nostrils and mouth forming a substantial puddle on the floor. Taking care to avoid the gathering blood, Adam then stepped back to the bar and poured another cup of bourbon and took a sip. As Downey recovered, he reached for the pistol. But Adam quickly intercepted by grabbing the skin encompassing the entire right side of Downey’s head from behind his ear to the tip of his chin. Bunching up this tissue into a grapefruit-sized wad, he used it like a handle to lift Downey from the floor. Red and gray foam, pulsating lumps of gum membrane, enamel flakes, and yellowish bone slivers oozed in a cumulus mass from Downey’s mouth and streamed down his narrow, quivering neck. His eyes darted about wildly. Adam held him close and said: “Don’t be pointing guns at people.” Then while holding Downey’s face in a vice-like grip with his left hand, Adam struck him in the opposing eye socket with a jolting right. The impact was so vigorous that the bone around his eye disintegrated and his cranium was hemispherically ruptured in thirteen places. Still grasping him by the distended tissue of his splintered face, Adam then dragged the unconscious body and heaved it out the back door of the saloon whereupon it tumbled approximately sixty feet to the bottom of a jagged, rocky chasm. “And if you ever threaten my family again, I'll beat the tar out of you!” he shouted into the darkness. Adam then returned to his place at the bar and continued to enjoy his delicious beverage. In the meantime, the bartender came out of the kitchen pulling a large galvanized pail on wheels and dragging a heavy-duty industrial mop. Adam watched as he policed the floor with earnest efficiency. “Sorry about the disjecta membra." “Don’t worry about it son, happens all the time. I've cleaned up worse. Anyway, the sumbitch had it coming..." Pausing mid-sentence as he rinsed the bloody mop, some sudden odd mystery contained within the bucket summoned his nimble consideration. Presently, the bartender appeared to grapple with sundry articles of an unclassified disposition captured there. Bringing this material together in a manageable arrangement to the forefront of his singular, inquisitive eye, he focused his undistracted study with the apparent aim being one of more perfect identification. Promptly concluding this undertaking he continued: “...you want these molars? They look like they’re in pretty good shape?" Adam slugged down the last pint straight from the pitcher. “Naw, give ‘em to some poor people.” “Anything else Hoss?" “Well, I reckon somebody ought to call an ambulance.” “Alright then.” Mr. Downey awoke from his coma twelve weeks later. He spent another seven months on a feeding tube at the V.A. hospital in Memphis and then a year at a nursing home in Bowling Green. Although his injuries caused complete deafness in his right ear, bilateral facial paralysis, and a serious speech impediment, he more or less resumed a somewhat normal life within about five years. However, he had no recollection of the encounter with Adam. Since he was discovered at the bottom of a ravine, in a grave state of intoxication, and there were no witnesses nor any indication that he had been robbed, the authorities could do little else than assume that his injuries were sustained purely as a result of his own drunken clumsiness. The severe neurological trauma, the extreme blood-alcohol level, or a combination of both apparently had relieved him of all memory of the events that had occurred on the night in question. However, accounts by multiple informants corroborate the widely referenced phenomenon that in subsequent years, upon hearing the words Adam or McCasoway either together or individually, Mr. Downey would descend into an abysmal state of catatonia accompanied by a grim period of uncontrollable trembling and severe drooling. To settle a class-action lawsuit by customers who had suffered food-poisoning and to help pay Mr. Downey’s medical bills, a bankruptcy judge sold the Wagon Tongue Inn while Mr. Downey was in the hospital. Eventually, with the aid of the undertaker’s daughter, Mr. Downey moved to a hippie commune in Mexico where he disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1974. His son absconded with most of the cash assets of the restaurant and fled to California and points beyond. After the failure of a number of unsavory business ventures, and several awkward encounters with domestic and international authorities, he died in a Turkish brothel in 1997 from complications related to scabies, blueball, and Johnson rash. Sheriff Smith was eventually implicated in a wide range of felonies such as extortion, grand larceny, kidnapping, and torture. He was tried and found guilty of murder, including at least four cases of infanticide. He was sentenced to death by electric chair in 1958. He continued the appeal process until his death from pneumonia in Eddyville penitentiary in 1967. After purchasing the Wagon Tongue Inn, from the bankruptcy court, Hannah Angelo changed the restaurant’s name and revamped its menu. Today she owns seventy-two dining establishments in eleven states. Slaw is not served at any of them. |