Eleven years ago.
“Try it,” I say.
The brute of a bartender wearing a lumberjack’s shirt and a bushy, flame-colored beard swipes a rag across the bar. He’s a human mountain, six-five, 250 pounds, a three-way hyphenate—manager, barkeep, bouncer—slinging shots, beers, and hardly ever mixing cocktails in this, call it, rustic bar in Kansas City. Bars like these on the East and West Coasts have started to become trendy, some heading toward hipster, and a few places have seen the emergence of a cocktail culture. No sign of that here. I would call this a hillbilly bar, without a shred of disrespect. I myself am a born and bred Kentuckian and proud of it.
The place smells of pine disinfectant, grilled burgers, and onions—and whiskey. An American pub, catering to business types on the move or on the make sitting shoulder to shoulder with blue-collar regulars in this home away from home, or pit stop, or a place to forget, fortify, or escape. A familiar place.
I’ve been here before. Or have I? I’ve been to similar bars for days and I’ll continue tomorrow. If I don’t come here, I’ll bring my sample bottles to another bar, and then another … and another …
I don’t stop.
I can’t.
I can’t be stopped.
It’s 11:50 in the morning, 10 minutes before the bartender unlocks the front door and ushers in the day-trippers. Plenty of time. I tap-tap-tap the lip of the bottle of bourbon I’ve placed on the bar. I grin at it. I do. I grin because I know the honey-colored liquor inside intimately and I know the convoluted, improbable—no, impossible journey—that brought the bottle and me here. It’s 2006, and at this moment I don’t know how the tale ends. I do know three things. One—the saga comes with some history, beginning 160 years ago in the Old West. Two—it’s a miracle I’m standing here in this bar … a miracle I’m standing at all … a miracle I’m alive. And, three—our little brand brings in virtually no cash flow, we’ve got a miniscule marketing budget, and few people have even heard of my upstart bourbon. All that adds up to one simple, incontrovertible fact: I really need to make this sale.
“Try it,” I say to the bartender again.
I nudge the bottle of bourbon another inch forward into his sightline and spin it to make sure the orange label faces him head on. He hitchhikes his thumb at a row of liquor bottles crammed onto a shelf buckling behind him.
“I’m overstocked,” he says.
“Well,” I say. “Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.”
The bartender frowns. “Huh?”
“Mark Twain,” I say.
“Ah.” He shimmies his massive shoulders as if shaking off fleas, flips the rag over, and resumes wiping down the bar. “Got to remember that one.”
“Good. Clearly, you have an appreciation for the best.”
He folds the bar rag into quarters, tosses it aside, picks up the bottle of bourbon, and squints at the label. “Bull-ay?”
“Bull-it,” I say. “Like what you fire out of a pistol.”
He peers at me dubiously.
“That would be my name,” I say. “Tom Bulleit. And you are?”
“Matt.”
“Pleased to meet you, Matt.” I offer my hand. Matt extends his in return and we shake. My hand disappears inside his palm, which is the size of a catcher’s mitt.
“Same here, Mr. Bulleit.”
“Please. Tom.”
“This your brand, huh?”
“It is.”
Matt nods and considers the bottle.
“Frontier Whiskey,” he murmurs, reading the label, and then slowly wagging his head. “Bourbon’s not really selling, Tom. Everybody’s drinking vodka.”
“I’ve heard. Repeatedly.”
“Sorry,” he says, sliding the bottle back to me.
I don’t budge. I keep my eyes fixed on his. “Here’s the thing.”
I pause.
“Now that we’re on a first-name basis, pretty nearly friends, I need a favor.”
Now he squints at me. “What kind of favor?”
“One sip.”
Matt leans both of his tree-limb sized forearms onto the bar. “I told you. Nobody’s buying bourbon.”
“That’s why I’m asking for a favor. Or maybe it’s a dare. One sip. For the fun of it. For research. For your edification. For future generations. For Mark Twain. Otherwise, I’ll have to come back tomorrow and go through my whole schtick all over again. And neither of us wants that.”
A sound explodes from Matt that may be a chuckle. An interminable 10 seconds ticks away. Time stops. Matt’s forehead folds in two and then I realize he may in fact be thinking. And then movement. Time resumes. Matt shakes his head, reaches under the bar, and brings out two shot glasses.
“Join me,” he says.
“Thank you,” I say, and pour us each a finger’s worth of bourbon. I raise my glass. “Cheers.”
We clink glasses. Matt swishes the liquid in his mouth, then inhales his shot. After a moment he licks his lips like a bear at a barbecue.
“Damn,” he says, sliding his shot glass toward me. I pour another finger’s worth. He drinks that one faster.
“My,” he says.
“So, just for research, may I interest you in a bottle for your bar?”
“Hell, no,” Matt says. “I’ll take two.”
* * *
Back to Shelbyville.
March 14, 2017.
I stand on the stage in this tent on the dedication of the first Bulleit Bourbon distillery, gripping the podium in front of what feels like an infinity of faces.
I look out at them and I say, “I don’t believe our lives are told in years … or months … or weeks. I believe we live our lives in moments.”
I pause.
“That’s what I remember most,” I say, and that’s what I am about to share.
The moments.
2 The Promise
I AM THE SON of two fathers, my biological father, the one I never knew but who lives in my heart and my imagination, and my father who adopted me, the one who gave me his heart, his soul, and his name. I know both to be military men, as am I. I know both to be warriors and heroes, and a hero I am not. But I, too, am a warrior, and like my warrior fathers, when I sign up for a mission, I complete it, or die trying. George Gage, my biological father, died in 1944 during his mission at Utah Beach in Normandy. The details are insignificant. His death—and the deaths of the thousands who died with him—is not.
* * *
I remember the smells.
I sit in my highchair at the kitchen table. My mother, Dorothy Bulleit, and my grandmother whom we call Nana, bake constantly—cakes, pies, cookies. As they swirl through the kitchen in a kind of dance, I summon the smell of chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven, resting on a plate just