Taft 2012 (15 page)

To punctuate her point, the haggard guitarist of the Lousy Kissers let loose an exploratory stab of feedback from his amplifier. Taft picked up two napkins and used them to cover his ears. “Isn’t it a little early for them to be starting?” he yelled over the din. “I thought this was meant to be the evening’s entertainment. For lack of a better word.”

“Uh, Bill,” said Sam, slipping two more shots of bourbon across the bar to Taft and Kowalczyk as if performing a magic trick, “it
is
evening. It’s nine-thirty.”

“Nine-thirty?” He rooted around his body for a pocket watch, then remembered he no longer carried one. No one did. He sighed, took out his phone, and hastily thumbed past a few missed calls from Susan and Rachel to check the time. “Thunderation.” She was right. The last few hours had slipped by in a watery, whiskey-drenched haze.

Sam laughed and threw out her arms. “Welcome to my time machine.”

Taft stared hard at her. “Oh, don’t even get me started about time machines, young lady.”

Kowalczyk jabbed him in the ribs again. Rather than looking suspicious, though, Sam flashed Taft a dazzling smile. “Young lady! It’s been a long time since someone called me that. Let alone a distinguished gentleman like yourself.”

It may have been the booze, but Taft could have sworn he heard a note of something other than teasing in Sam’s tone. It had been a long time—longer than he cared to remember, seeing as how a chill had crept into the conjugal bed soon after he and Nellie had married—since a woman had spoken to him in that way. Taft grabbed the shot of bourbon before him and downed it like a giant draining a thimble. “This is really doing wonders for me.”

But neither Sam nor Kowalczyk heard him. Or anything else. At that moment, the Lousy Kissers started playing.

At first it was a dull roar. Then a sharp one. Then it sounded like a locomotive—no, a dozen locomotives, all crashing into one another. As if a switch had been thrown, the slouching, indolent-looking young men in the Lousy Kissers jumped to life. At the front was Rob, his body jerking in all directions like a puppet.

Puppets, however, didn’t usually sound like they were dying.

“Good God. Is that boy in pain?” Taft yelled.

Sam rolled her eyes. “Only the existential kind.”

The band played on. Taft couldn’t tell one song from the next, but after a few minutes, his ears adjusted to the onslaught. He was able to discern a steady beat, a hint of a structure, and even the barest modicum of melody. What he couldn’t decipher, though, was a single word Rob was screaming.

He turned to ask Kowalczyk for a translation, but the stool was empty. He looked up; Taft could see Kowalczyk’s bald head among the crowd, bobbing in unison with a few other similarly shaved
patrons.

“Forgive him,” Taft said to Sam. “He’s not acting his age. He’s had a long few months.”

“Oh, really? What did he do?”

“Well, he shot me, for one.”

“And yet, here he his, drinking with you on New Year’s Eve. That’s quite a friend.”

“He is, isn’t he?”

“How about a lady friend? You got one of those?”

Taft thanked the heavens for the anesthetic effects of alcohol; for the first time since he’d awakened in this new century, the thought of Nellie didn’t send a pang of agony through his soul. “No. None of those.”

She laid a hand on his. Across her knuckles were tattooed the letters f-u-c-k. “You know something?” Her eyes bored into his as the Lousy Kissers reached a crescendo of cacophony. “You’d be damned handsome with some facial hair. You ever thought about growing a mustache?”

TAFT WOKE UP the next morning, the first day of the year 2012, with a magnificent headache, no memory of the previous few hours, and a snoring, nude woman on top of him.

Upon waking a moment later, Sam seemed as startled as he was. Then she kissed him and laid her head back down his chest. “Happy new year, Bill. Way to ring it in, huh?”

Half an hour later, both of them panting and tangled in sheets, she finally relinquished her perch and rolled over on the bed next to him.

“Sam, I don’t know what to—”

“Nothing. That’s exactly what you should say. Just shut up and bask. I
know
that you know how good that was.”

“Are all women of the twenty-first century as … robust as you?”

She laughed. “Twenty-first century? You really weren’t kidding about that time-machine business last night, were you?”

Taft lifted his head. A wave of nausea washed over him. “Where’s Kowalczyk?” he asked, as concerned about his friend as he was anxious to change the subject.

“Don’t worry. He’s on the couch. It’s funny, no matter how drunk he got last night, he wouldn’t let you out of his sight. When he insisted on coming back here with us, I was afraid he was talking about a threesome.” She grinned mischievously. “Well, not
afraid
, exactly. But he passed out in the living room as soon as we got here.”

She reached over and ran a finger across his cheek. “It’s funny. He acts less like your buddy and more like your bodyguard. I wonder why that is?”

“He is, ah, very loyal.”

Sam got on her knees in the bed and drew herself up, shoulders back. Scars and a hint of wrinkles were mixed in with the faded tattoos. This was a woman who had clearly seen more than her fair share of hard times. Yet, he had to admit, there was a wild, raw beauty to her. Not to mention an uneven smile that seemed suddenly slightly deranged.

“Oh, come on, Bill. I know who you are. Known all along. You don’t live through all the things I have without being a suspicious bitch. You’re Taft.” With that, she moved over to straddle his legs, effectively pinning him to the mattress. With panic twining around the uneasiness in his gut, he glanced out the slightly ajar door to see Kowalczyk’s stockinged feet sticking up over the arm of a sofa.

“Me? Taft? Nonsense. I mean, who’s Taft?”

Sam licked her lips. “You know, I’ve never slept with a president before. Fuck, I’ve never even voted.” She threw her head back and started cackling madly. Then, as abruptly as she started, she leaned
forward and held down his arms. Her dirty blond hair tickled his face; her breath was sweetly, sourly enticing.

“Are you ready for round two, Mr. President?” Her tongue darted out and ran across the place where his mustache used to be. “This one’s going to be even better. My husband should be home in about twenty minutes. How about you and I take a quick dip in the shower, then surprise him with a three-way?”

Within the span of ten seconds, Sam was on the floor, an ear-piercing alarm was shrieking like a banshee, Taft had yanked the befuddled Kowalczyk up from the couch, and the two were running out the door of Sam’s house toward their rental car.

W
ithin a quarter of an hour, Kowalczyk had threaded their way out of Sam’s rundown suburb and onto the highway. They both exhaled in relief as the odometer launched up to sixty. Other than that, they didn’t make a sound.

After a Herculean struggle to dress his voluminous frame while sitting, Taft leaned his head against the cool glass of the window and let his thoughts drift. What had he been thinking? Granted, New Year’s Eve was the most appropriate time to act inappropriately. But last night’s behavior wasn’t in his character. Or perhaps it was; as flabbergasted and deeply mortified at his own reckless actions as he was, he felt an odd glow of—dare he think it—pride. He’d spent so much of his life trying to appease others. Appearing sober, genial, and respectable at all times was the first step at accomplishing that. And yet, as he’d learned so many times during his first life, trying to make everyone happy inevitably made them all howl for your blood. Yes, he’d been selfish last night—selfish, impulsive, and utterly oblivious to what others thought of him. But damned if it hadn’t felt good.

Strangely, though, as Taft’s thoughts wandered through a foggy, disconnected fugue of feelings and memories, one thing kept recurring: Susan. He’d spent two months in the near-daily company of a learned, compassionate, scholarly woman whose primary interest in life was, well,
him
. She was, frankly, the kind of woman to whom he’d always been drawn, but he could not have been less interested. And yet now he’d jumped in bed with the first floozy who’d gotten him drunk. His queasiness returned with a vengeance.

“Kowalczyk. Pull over. Now.”

Kowalczyk flashed him a livid scowl for breaking their silence, but his look softened as soon as he saw Taft’s face. A moment later, Taft let loose a geyser of vomit across the dashboard. Keeping cool, Kowalczyk edged the car to the side of the highway. As soon as the tires noisily hit the coarse asphalt of the shoulder, Taft had already flung open his door; by the time Kowalczyk pulled to a full stop, Taft had emptied the steaming contents of his stomach into the cold air.

“What,” gasped Taft, “did I eat last night?”

“Do you really want me to answer that question?” said Kowalczyk, wrinkling his nose.

Taft shot him the most offended look he could muster. “I’m serious. I don’t remember anything past the popcorn.”

“Bill, that Rob kid ran next door to Herbert’s and brought back a friggin’ wheelbarrow full of that shitty food. Hot dogs, nacho fries, Bombers. You must have sucked down your own weight in that sludge, and then some.”

Taft gaped at him and then hung his head out the open door and vomited some more. As his insides knotted up and his eyes filled with tears, he could think of only one thing: to thank all that was holy that Susan couldn’t see him right now. Or Irene, or Rachel, or Trevor. But especially Abby. Dear, sweet, angelic little Abby.

Wiping his mouth, he reached around to the back seat and into his open suitcase. He rummaged around for a moment and pulled out the good-luck charm Abby had smuggled into it. The Taft action figure. It was already grossly inaccurate; if the toy were large as life and made of flesh, it would weigh a good 75 pounds less than he did at the moment. But it was unrecognizable in another way. The look on its little face was friendly, crinkly-eyed, happy.

The little fellow also had a mustache. A grand, manly, granite-colored mustache.

A presidential-looking mustache.

Taft pulled out his phone. He was about to call Rachel, but he realized there were five more messages from Susan since he’d checked his phone at the bar the day before. He got out of the car, walked a few yards into the brown grass along the highway, and hit the key that dialed Susan’s number. She answered almost before the first ring sounded.

“Bill? Oh, God, Bill. Look, I’m sorry I’ve been calling so much. This is big, though. Really big.”

“Susan. Slow down, if you please. What’s going on?”

He heard her take a deep breath. “Bill, they’re trying to get you on the ballot.”

“Who?”

“Who do you think? The Tafties. God, I hate that word. I mean, the Taft Party. Them and that kook Allen the Electrician. Not to mention our pal Pauline Craig. They’ve mobilized. They’re pushing to get you put on the ballot in all fifty states. As a third-party candidate. As the head of the Taft Party. Or, failing that, they say they’ll settle for telling the whole nation to vote for you as a write-in candidate.”

“When did this happen?”

“They announced it yesterday. Press conference, media blitz,
the works—my God, you really haven’t been watching the news, have you?”

Taft made a small, noncommittal noise.

“But, Bill, there’s something else. Something even scarier.”

He was almost afraid to ask. “Yes? Out with it.”

“The polls. They’re going crazy. I know this is the most horrifying thing you could possibly imagine right now, but the polls are overwhelmingly in your favor. Not just to get on the ballot—to be a
competitive candidate
. Of course, the Republicans are still all shaking themselves out, but no matter which of those jokers they match you against—you know, Governor Rockstar, Governor Frownyface, Senator Wackadoodle—you’re still holding your own against them, and you’re not all that far behind the president. Bill, somehow you’ve
connected
. America wants you to run. And if these numbers are to be believed, they want you back. In the White House.”

Taft stood there, blinking. The wind—blowing up from the prairie, perhaps across half the continent or more—poured over him. Above him, the vast American sky stretched like a vaulted ceiling from horizon to horizon. He thought of all the great and bizarre and horrifying things he’d seen and learned about this new United States, but also about how, underneath it all, it was still the country he knew and loved. He felt a sudden chill right down to his bones.

“Bill? Are you there? Bill?” Susan’s voice squawked from the phone.

“Susan. I’m here. I mean to say, I’m
really
here. I’m coming.”

“What? Bill, what do you mean?”

“I’m coming back, Susan. Hold tight, will you? And get ready. I’m coming back.”

“Don’t sit up nights thinking about making me president, for that will never come, and I have no ambition in that direction. Any party which would nominate me would make a great mistake.”

—
William Howard Taft, while serving as governor of the Philippines under President Theodore Roosevelt, 1903

washington, DC craigslist > district of Columbia > personals > rants & raves

I SAW TAFT! (Penn Quarter)

Date: 2012-01-03 4:25PM EST

William Howard Taft was walking around the District today! I almost didn’t recognize him; he’s taken a razor to his ’stache, so now he looks less like Santa Claus and more like John Goodman.

I was thinking about it. You know how the world seems to have gone utterly batshit crazy in the past ten years? We’ve had terrorists smashing planes into our cities, we’ve had the U.S. armed forces in Iraq forever now, we’ve had all these tsunamis and hurricanes and crackdowns in the Middle East and all this horrible, horrible shit. But then now—now there’s this guy, back to life, out of nowhere, and he’s a good guy. You can just tell. Maybe … I dunno, maybe it’s finally a bit of good crazy, to kind of start offsetting the bad crazy. Just a little. Just enough to let us know that it’s not all for shit.

Or maybe I’m drunk. Before 5 p.m., even.

• Location: Penn Quarter

FROM THE DESK OF REP. RACHEL TAFT
(Ind.–OH)

Notes—Tues. 3rd—Do I really want to run for vice president?
Cons:

—We won’t win. Third parties don’t. Lot of time and ulcers to put into losing.

—Distraction from legislation, just when it’s time to introduce the International Foods Act.

—Crass exploitation of family name instead of personal achievements.

—Putting Abby and Trevor through the ringer.

—Putting stress on relationship with Grandpa.

—Putting stress on Grandpa, period. How can this be a good idea for him?
Pros:

—We won’t win. Ought to make it easy to stay honest.

—None of the other challengers are much to write home about anyway.

—Populist celebrity means influence means my legislation gets more support. Sometimes. Maybe.

—Crass exploitation of family name has worked very well for Kennedys, Bushes, etc.

—Trevor and Abby think we should do it.

—Well, why DID Wm Howard get zapped into the future, if not for this?

From
Taft: A Tremendous Man
,
by Susan Weschler:

When I went to work for President Taft as his liaison to the twenty-first century, the first order of business was to start him off with a basic primer on the most important events that had happened in America and the world since he’d vanished. He dove right into the big-scale history and ate it right up. But when it came to the personal history, to the question of how his own disappearance had directly affected his own familiar world, it was a different story. He didn’t want to hear about it. He wasn’t ready to process it.

When he returned to Washington, D.C., after his New Year’s road trip, there was a new resolve in his eyes. He asked me if he could look at that folder, the one he’d shied away from two months earlier. I gave it to him, and I will never forget the look in his eyes as he opened it to find, sitting on top, a black and white photograph. I knew what he was seeing: his wife. His beloved Nellie and all his children, along with the rest of his family, his friends, his colleagues. They stood outdoors, in a familiar place: Arlington National Cemetery.

“That’s … that’s my grave, isn’t it? That’s a photograph of my funeral.” It wasn’t a question. It was obvious.

I told him: After he’d gone missing from Wilson’s inauguration, there’d been a citywide search. Then nationwide. Then worldwide. After months, it was clear he wasn’t to be found. Theories abounded. Had he been kidnapped by a foreign power? Did he run away from the pressures of politics to live a quiet life incognito? Was it suicide? But eventually it was clear that the nation needed a funeral. So an empty casket was buried at Arlington. He was the first president to be buried in the national military cemetery, though of course no part of his body actually lay there.

Tears were rolling down President Taft’s cheeks as he saw this picture of his own memorial, this tableau that no man ever sees. Then I saw his face harden as his eyes flickered from the image of his wife and
children to the man standing next to them. Teddy Roosevelt. The man who’d been his friend. The man who’d then spent Taft’s last two years relentlessly tearing him down in public, trying to reclaim the office he’d previously seemed glad to hand off to his friend. There stood Roosevelt at Taft’s funeral, a hand of comfort on Nellie’s shoulder. I could only imagine what was going through his mind.

“President Taft,” I said, “Roosevelt delivered a eulogy for you. I think you might be interested to read it.”

“No,” he said. “No, Miss Weschler, I would not be so interested.” He closed the folder and shook his head. “It’s done. It’s the past. It’s gone. Let us look to the future.”