Taft 2012 (20 page)
Authors: Jason Heller
Tags: #Fiction, #Satire, #Alternative History, #Political
Just then, Taft heard the soft fall of footsteps behind him. Then the clearing of a throat. He turned around to find what looked like a professor leaning toward him, as hesitantly as if approaching the last known specimen of a species thought to be extinct. “Sorry to interrupt you, sir, but … someone’s been trying to call you on your cell phone.” The woman took out a piece of paper from her pocket and read it. “Your, uh, granddaughter, Rachel. She contacted our office and asked that you call her immediately.” Then she closed the paper and looked at him as directly as she was able. “I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, Mr. Taft, but it seems a friend of yours has passed away. Irene Kaye? I’m so sorry.”
With the action figure dangling between his fingers, Taft just stood there, as cold and immobile as the useless metal simulacrum above him.
The Cincinnati Journal
Obituaries
June 1, 2012
Irene Margaret Kaye Lived Through 19 Presidents, But Her Allegiance Belonged To One
Irene Margaret Kaye was a quiet woman with a kind smile. Her fellow residents at Patterson Senior Village will attest to that. She was by far the oldest resident of Patterson, and also one of the oldest residents of Ohio.
Mrs. Kaye died Monday, June 4, at Patterson Senior Village from complications arising from heart disease. She was 106.
Born Irene Margaret O’Malley to Irish immigrants and raised in the Hyde Park area, she was among the first 1,300 students enrolled at Withrow University High School in 1913, graduating in 1917. She married World War I veteran Joseph Kaye in 1920. They settled in Hyde Park and lived there their entire lives.
Mr. Kaye died in 1972 of diabetes, soon after the couple had sold their modest sewing shop and retired. Mrs. Kaye moved into Patterson Senior Village in 1981. Due to medical complications, the couple had no children. She is survived by various distant cousins.
Theodore Roosevelt was president of the United States when Mrs. Kaye was born, but her neighbors say she had always held a place in her heart for Roosevelt’s successor, William Howard Taft.
“She loved to talk about the postcard she’d sent [Taft] when she was a little girl, back when he was still in office, before he disappeared and came back and all that,” says Patterson head nurse Becky Shalom. “And, of course, Taft himself came to pay her a visit last fall, which delighted her to no end. She also collected teddy bears and made the most beautiful quilts you ever saw, but mostly she listened to other residents rather than talk about herself all the time. She was an angel.”
Service will be held Friday, June 8, at Orlowitz Funeral Home. Burial will be in Walnut Hills Cemetery. —
Tracy Sullivan
CLASSIFIED
Secret Service Incidence Report
BBR20120612.19
Agent Ira Kowalczyk
Attached find perimeter plan documents for 6/14, 6/15, and 6/16, the Taft Party National Convention at Great American Ball Park. Agents Pearsall, Horton, and myself assigned to Big Boy’s personal detail; agents Mietus, Kerr, and St. John assigned to Grand Girl’s. Have cleared all of Taft Party’s hired security forces for general crowd-control duties.
At this point, my main concern is not any external threat to Big Boy’s physical safety, but rather his psychological safety. He has been distracted and unfocused for the past two weeks. Must make sure he doesn’t put himself in harm’s way through sheer bloody Taftishness.
G
reat American Ball Park squatted at the south end of downtown Cincinnati, an overthrown pitch away from the Ohio River. Not that anyone was thinking about baseball today or, indeed, about anything other than the crowds. Taft had to hand it to the party leaders; they might not be—well, definitely were not—the campaign lieutenants he would have chosen had any of this been his own idea, but they nonetheless were capable organizers. As soon as the venue for the convention had been set in stone, they’d miraculously mobilized their various factions. Some anonymous benefactor had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars reserving every spare hotel room in the city and surrounding area. A fleet of private shuttles had shown up earlier in the week, ready to ferry battalions of Tafties from one event to the other. Umbrella-shaded food carts had popped up around the city like mushrooms, though Taft had noticed with a passing frown that the lunch vendors all seemed to carry a robust selection of Fulsom snacks among their wares. Wasn’t anyone
listening
to him?
As ravenous as he was this morning, Taft sat in his makeshift
office suite in the Millennium Hotel and ate as slowly as he could. Sharing breakfast helped; it was easier for him to avoid wolfing down an entire plate of food that way. Of course, the cardboard-like taste and texture of these newfangled whole-grain bagels slowed the process considerably. For the better, though; his diet hadn’t been easy to institute and adhere to over the past few months. But what had been? Despite that he still needed to lose a good fifty pounds, he was on the mend; he let his momentary lapses—nights where he broke down and indulged in calories, carbohydrates, maudlin thoughts of Teddy and Nellie—pass behind closed doors, only to be forced to the back of his mind by morning.
He swallowed the last bite of his meager breakfast and pushed away the plate. He knew he should
feel
something. Anything. Here he was, arriving at a convention attended by thousands of people, all of them there to see and hear and support him. But today, like every day since Irene’s funeral, he felt cold and hollow. Was he dead all over again? He thought he’d genuinely embraced his new life by joining this Taft Party campaign. But the knowledge that the last person he’d known from the past, however tenuous a link she may have been, was now gone, had left him irrevocably adrift in this century. He may as well have tossed his own soul into the grave with her, along with the Taft action figure he’d impulsively placed by her side in the casket while saying his final goodbyes.
And yet it wasn’t just Irene. Nor was it just the overwhelming vertigo that came from trying to navigate the conflicting agendas of all these Taft Party patrons. Something, he felt, was askew. Unsettled. What was that saying Archie Butt had been so fond of, about waiting for the other boot to drop? That was the sensation Taft was experiencing, that he was hanging in an ill-defined limbo, failing to grasp some fundamental piece of the jumble that made up his existence.
Well, he thought, at least he’d been able to grow his mustache back to its full glory. He wouldn’t have to stand in front of the assembled hordes of the Taft Party and recite his platform speech without the comfort of his luxurious twin tufts. That was something.
Not for the first time, he thanked the heavens that no one in the press had ever thought to refer to his whiskers as “Taft tufts.” Or, at least, hadn’t done so anyplace where he’d seen it. And then he sighed heavily as he remembered that, these days, even a child as young as Abby could likely use the Google to find fifty-three occurrences of that very formulation across eleven decades, without even trying very hard.
WELCOME TO THE 2012 TAFT PARTY NATIONAL CONVENTION MEDIA CENTER
Created by the 2012 Convention Host Committee in conjunction with the City of Cincinnati, this online pressroom provides media with ongoing news updates, access to hi-res images, and factual information about the host city.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Where did Taft dine and drink in his native Cincinnati, then and now? What’s the best place to score Taft memorabilia? Where is the Party truly partying this weekend? We have the answers to all your questions regarding the big buildup to William Howard Taft’s historic platform speech at Great American Ball Park on Saturday. //
Click for more
.
DEMS AND GOP CONSPICUOUS IN THEIR SILENCE
Friday, June 15, 2012
The Democratic and Republican leaderships—up to and including their parties’ presidential candidates—surely have a strong opinion on the Taft Party National Convention. So why are they dodging questions and flagrantly ignoring it? Are they afraid—or
really
afraid? Cincinnati’s best and brightest discuss the issue. //
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.
THANKS TO TAFT, HOT DOG CARTS GO GREEN
Friday, June 15, 2012
Many Taft conventioneers have been asking themselves a crucial question over the last two days: what’s up with the hot dogs? Per William Howard Taft’s explicit request, all twenty-two of Great American Ball Park’s licensed hot dog vendors are now serving only organic, non-GMO veggie dogs for the duration of the TPNC. That’s right: no meat. But what do the vendors—some of whom, like sausage vet Larry Welton, have been serving all-beef wieners at
Great American since the days of Riverfront Stadium—have to say about the switch? //
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.
CHICAGO PUNK BAND THE LOUSY KISSERS HOLD “FLASH CONCERT” IN FRONT OF GREAT AMERICAN BALL PARK
Friday, June 15, 2012
The first night of the Taft Party National Convention wound down with a series of speeches by Taft Party luminaries at Great American Ball Park. But the party was just getting started: a rowdy, inebriated, and by all accounts musically inept group called the Lousy Kissers pulled up to the ballpark’s front entrance in the beds of two pickup trucks equipped with generators. Within moments, an equally unsavory crowd had formed around them—and the band’s singer, later identified as Rob Reitman of Chicago, began screaming bawdy songs about Taft’s allegedly legendary sexual exploits and the “piss-poor quality” of the veggie dogs the park had been serving all day. //
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.
The Taft 2012 Convention Daily—Friday
Delegate Spotlight: Why Taft, Why Now?
RAFAEL DELGADO, LOUISIANA: “When Taft was the governor general of the Philippines after the Philippine-American War, he refused to use the U.S. military to put down the Filipinos who kept resisting the occupation; instead, he trusted the local law officers to take care of it and gave them the support they needed. And it worked! Does that sound like a guy who’d, I don’t know, say, get American forces stuck in Iraq for a decade? Because it doesn’t to me. Taft 2012 all the way.”
CHELSEA PENNYPACKER, CALIFORNIA: “He doesn’t try to make stuff sound good for TV. He just talks. He doesn’t care about getting good press, but he also doesn’t try to shut the press out, and he doesn’t waste time arguing with them. I can’t remember the last time I saw a candidate who used so many polysyllabic words in the same press conference. Taft isn’t afraid to be smart, but he also never sounds condescending.”
MARIA JONES, MICHIGAN: “His first year in office, I guess, President Taft stuck his neck out to fire Teddy Roosevelt’s favorite forestry officials when they couldn’t get their act together and figure out how to work with the new bosses. I know at the time that Taft caught a lot of flak for it from the environmentalists, but I still like the fact that he cared enough to investigate the whole thing himself, instead of just accepting whatever either side told him. That reassures me that I could trust Taft to do what’s right about the whole global-warming thing, because I know
I
sure can’t figure out which scientists to listen to.”
HERB YOUTIE, FLORIDA: “I’m a Republican because my father was a Republican, which means he would have voted for Taft in 1912. This is probably going to be the last election I’m around for, so I’m voting for Taft in 2012. Seems like the right thing to do.”
Excerpts From Remote Surveillance Log, Great American Ball Park, Ground Floor, Men’s Restroom 3, Urinals 7 and 8
Saturday, June 16, 12:56 p.m
.
—There’s still one thing I’m not totally sure about, though: Taft’s stand on immigration.
—Yeah, I’ll agree with you there. Seems like it’s not his main focus. I sure know what I wish he would do about immigration, though.
—What’s that?
—Just open the damn borders and charge money for citizenship.
—You’re not serious?
—As a heart attack. Look, we waste how many billions of dollars trying to stop people from coming here? What’s the point? I’m not even trying to get idealistic about it. I know America was built on immigration and all that, but that’s not the point. I’m just being practical. If you can pay, you can come here. If you get caught without your receipt, you work it off until you can.
—Right. Like washing dishes if you can’t pay your bill at the diner.
—Exactly.
—I’m truly impressed. I can’t honestly tell if that’s racist or not.
—See, that’s why Taft is the man to do this. He was around before racism even existed, right? So he’s in the clear.
—Um, I gotta go wash my hands.
Saturday, June 16, 3:49 p.m
.
—I don’t know if I can take another damn speech. Know what? Taft should outlaw political speeches. I mean it. Fuck ’em. Just a bunch of hot air. [
Subject eructates
.]
—Yeah, well, I don’t know if I can take another one of those shitty plastic cups of Fulsom Lite. What do they brew that stuff with? Dishwater?
—Actually, I think you’re looking at it.
“W
hy, Taft, old man, you’re looking positively svelte.”
The man who stood in the hotel hallway outside Taft’s suite, speaking from around the back of Kowalczyk’s shoulder, was tall, gray haired, and patrician, his flawlessly tailored suit accentuating the sharp lines of his nose and chin. Taft had never seen him before, though he knew the type: wealthy Northeasterners who wouldn’t dream of carrying their pocket cash with anything other than solid-gold money clips.
“Wouldn’t give me his name,” said Kowalczyk, blocking the doorway, “but he’s clean, and he says it’s an urgent message from the party committee.”
“That’s about the size of it,” the man said, stifling a yawn with an oddly contorted hand. Taft started as he recognized the twisted configuration of fingers. It was the secret greeting of the Taft family’s old college legacy, the Skull and Bones Society. Taft was bemused to see his first face-to-face confirmation that the esoteric fraternity indeed still thrived, though of course they’d taken note of
his reappearance and sent him that typically bizarre Christmas card. But what the devil could the man possibly be pestering him for, a mere three hours before he was scheduled to address the whole of the Taft Party National Convention from its main stage?