Taft 2012 (2 page)
Authors: Jason Heller
Tags: #Fiction, #Satire, #Alternative History, #Political
“Hey, turn off those cameras! Back away! Oh, my God—that face. That’s impossible. Holy shit.”
CLASSIFIED
Secret Service Incidence Report
WHG20111107.027
Agent Ira Kowalczyk
At approximately 1042, an oversized mammalian figure covered in mud appeared behind the White House South Lawn Fountain, approaching the press conference in progress on the lawn. It was unclear to me for several seconds whether the intruder was a man or a large animal as it lurched toward the crowd while moaning loudly. As the closest perimeter guard, I drew my firearm and ordered the intruder to halt while the executive guard secured POTUS. The intruder bellowed louder and attempted to proceed past the South Lawn Fountain in the direction of POTUS and the press corps. I discharged my weapon once, striking the intruder in the leg, and he collapsed against the fountain. I approached and saw that the water from the fountain, along with the morning drizzle, was washing the mud from the intruder’s body. He was a very large man, over 6 feet tall, probably 300 pounds, wearing a formal tweed suit. He had white hair and a handlebar mustache. My first thought was that he looked like some sort of deranged presidential history buff dressed up as William Howard Taft.
From
Taft: A Tremendous Man
,
by Susan Weschler:
I’ll never forget the moment I first saw him on the television screen. Not a picture—
him
. There was no mistaking him. I’d been studying the history of the man who owned that plump, jowled, puffy-eyed face my entire professional life:
Taft.
William Howard Taft. Twenty-seventh president of the United States. Weighed in at 335 pounds. Worked with unceasing devotion to the job for four years—but was so honest a politician, he ended up infuriating every single interest group that had ever supported him. Lost his 1912 reelection bid in a miserable, crushing defeat. And then just
disappeared
the morning of March 5, 1913, the day his successor, Woodrow Wilson, was inaugurated. Taft was never seen or heard from again; his last known words, spoken right outside the White House just hours before Wilson took the oath of office, were: “I’ll be glad to be going. This is the loneliest place in the world.” After that sad utterance, Taft never showed up for the ceremony. Or anything else. Ever.
Which meant the chaotic footage they kept replaying on CNN couldn’t be real. Couldn’t be him. How could he be here now, a century later, stumbling mud-covered into the midst of an unsuspecting White House press conference?
And yet that was clearly no fake girth, no Halloween mask. It was either the oddest terrorist attack in history, the stupidest reality-show prank imaginable … or it was Taft.
Like some sort of jolly were-walrus, he sat on the edge of the South Lawn Fountain, blinking and grinning. He was still filthy, but the rain had finally uncovered most of the man. He wore a great wool overcoat, a suit so stuffed that it strained at the buttons, and a huge filthy mustache that swirled and twirled and bristled across his upper lip. Beneath his feet, the water of the fountain had turned faintly red. He appeared to be in shock—and then he spoke. His voice was much higher and more
melodious than you’d expect from such a giant of a man as he uttered the words that now live forever in the annals of history: “I will gladly grant a Cabinet position, of your choice, to the first upright citizen who brings me pudding cake and a nice lobster thermidor.” Then, of course, he collapsed.
H
e had slept, and woke, and slept again. Doctors had come and gone. So had men in black suits. Both had asked a great many questions. One or the other had drawn blood from the crook of his elbow and even had the unmitigated gall to clip a bit of hair from his mustache. The hair had been quickly sealed in a small transparent bag, but he felt scarcely strong enough even to wonder what that was all about, much less ask. Through it all, peculiar electrical devices whirred and pinged, and he faded in and out of consciousness.
Finally, after his third or fourth doze, he sat up, lucid, hungry. Alone. He was in a well-appointed bedroom suite; under the bed sheets, he was naked and clean. Draped over an armchair lay a fresh gray suit that looked to be close to his size, though for some reason it included neither waistcoat nor hat. He climbed out of bed and found that the suit was impeccably tailored, but it was still difficult to squeeze into, particularly his left leg, the upper half of which was swathed in an ungainly bandage.
Taft didn’t recognize the room, but he knew the smell of the
place. It had filled his nostrils much as it had saturated his soul over the past four years.
He was in the White House.
No sooner had he spit-shined his shoes and curled the ends of what remained of his mustache, a knock came at the door.
“Yes, by all means, come in!”
The door creaked open, and a tall, thin man in a suit—
also
missing its waistcoat!—walked in. He crossed the room, smiled, and offered Taft his hand.
“Mr. Taft, please. Don’t try to get up. You’ve been through a lot in the last twenty-four hours.”
“It appears I have! And who might you be? Are you here to bring me my meal? You will be my eternal hero if you could run down to the kitchen and fetch me a ham or two.”
The man closed his eyes for a brief moment before smiling again. “Dinner will be coming soon. First, I need you to listen. It may not seem like you were sleeping for long, and Lord knows we have no idea how or why this happened. But you went missing from the White House … quite some time ago. This is not exactly the world you remember.”
Taft laughed. “Not the world I remember? Why, I’d have to agree with you there. Today I’ve been shot, assaulted with strange machines, and spoken to in riddles. I appear to be in a world where the president of the United States can be condescended to like a child. By a manservant such as yourself, no less.”
“Mr. Taft,” the man said, “I need you to keep an open mind here, today and in the coming days. There is a lot you’re going to need to adjust to. First of all, I am the president of the United States. Not you. Not Woodrow Wilson. Me.”
Before Taft could counter him, the man raised his hand and pressed on.
“You’ve been missing and presumed dead—one of America’s great mysteries—for a
very
long time. Don’t worry, the United States is still strong, still proud, still prosperous. But—” He hesitated. “Well, I’d better just say it. You’ve apparently been asleep for almost ninety-nine years. Today is November 8. The year is 2011. Mr. Taft, welcome to the twenty-first century.”
Transcript
,
Raw Talk with Pauline Craig
,
broadcast Nov. 9, 2011
PAULINE CRAIG: A giant beast of a man bursts into a presidential press conference, is shot by Secret Service, and now, two days later, the White House is telling us that this befuddled intruder in a carnival mustache
really is
the missing former president William Howard Taft. Almost a hundred years after he vanished. I’m used to the government telling whoppers, but come on, now! Well, one way or another, it’s history in the making, folks. You’re living it. And
Raw Talk
is here to break it all down for you. Our first guest today, with us via satellite, is Director of National Intelligence James Mackler. Director Mackler, you’ve come on
Raw Talk
, much to our amazement, to back up the president’s outrageous claim earlier today that the man who stumbled onto the White House lawn has turned out to be the real William Howard Taft.
JAMES MACKLER: Thank you, Pauline. Under normal circumstances, an ongoing national security investigation wouldn’t be something we’d publicly comment on so quickly. But with Monday’s bizarre incident happening live in front of cameras, and—and with the startling facts we’ve uncovered, the president wants to get the information out to the public as quickly as possible, to minimize confusion and head off any worries about possible terrorist threats. So, here it is. Let me first explain—there are many levels of government security. There’s secret, and then there’s top secret—
PAULINE CRAIG: And then there’s SCI, sensitive compartmented information, which is the very highest top secret.
JAMES MACKLER: Yes. We compartmentalize the most extreme federal security information. And in the very smallest compartment—the
information that, until now, no one outside the tightest, most secure handful of officials has even needed to know even existed, much less known what it is—is the identification code every president since the Civil War has memorized to protect the government against infiltration by a presidential impostor.
PAULINE CRAIG: In case something like—well, something like this happens.
JAMES MACKLER: Yes. It’s never happened before. No president’s identity has ever been called into question, until two days ago. We asked our apparent Taft for the presidential ID code. He knew it.
PAULINE CRAIG: He knew it. I see. And you’re more prepared to accept the idea of a total violation of the laws of nature than the idea that a government secret could have leaked.
JAMES MACKLER: There are secrets, and then there are
secrets
, and then, beyond those, there are the secrets so secret they keep secrets from each other. I don’t know how to explain his appearance after a hundred years, but I do know as an absolute certainty that that man could not know that code unless he used to sit in the Oval Office.
PAULINE CRAIG: Well, let’s ask our second guest, also here via satellite: Dr. Ernest Cho, chief biologist at the Naval Research Laboratory. Dr. Cho, the intelligence community IDs this man as William Howard Taft. What does science have to say about the fact that it’s impossible?
ERNEST CHO: Pauline, I know this is all incredible, but—we’ve got two things to address, the
if
and the
how
. The if is pretty straightforward: the Smithsonian collection has vintage samples of President Taft’s hair. We spent yesterday running a DNA test, and it was a match. Genetically
speaking, that man is either William Howard Taft or his brother. And, of course, his brothers have been dead and buried for a century.
PAULINE CRAIG: Well, gee, are you sure about that?
ERNEST CHO: Ah, yes. We’ve—we’ve checked. Sorry, I know that’s unpleasant, but there’s no room to be sloppy with something like this. On top of the DNA, every physical identifying trait also matches President Taft’s medical history, which is well documented. His wife was obsessed with his health. There are a
lot
of records. As for how he could have vanished for a century and still be not only alive but unaged—we don’t know. Ah, there are certain hunter-gatherer tribes in New Guinea that are able to arrest the human metabolism by absorbing a mixture of arboreal fungi, but nothing that approaches this magnitude. Mr. Taft, for his part, has no sense of time having passed whatsoever. He tells us he thought he’d just sat down outside and dozed off while walking to Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration.
PAULINE CRAIG: In 1913.
ERNEST CHO: Yes. There certainly have been cases of human hibernation reported occasionally throughout history. They’re far-fetched, obviously, and science is reluctant to accept the truth of things that cannot be explained. But every scientific tool we’re able to apply to this situation tells us that, this time, the far fetched is true. He’s Taft.
PAULINE CRAIG: Human hibernation. Well, if any human was going to hibernate, I guess it makes sense that it would be one who looks like a bear. Our final guest is preeminent Taft historian Susan Weschler of American University. Professor Weschler, you’ve been working on a biography of President Taft for years. Would you say you know him better than anyone else living today does?
SUSAN WESCHLER: Uh, thank you, Pauline, that’s very kind. I suppose that’s true. But being the foremost authority on Taft is like being the foremost authority on—on Luxembourg.
PAULINE CRAIG: I don’t follow you.
SUSAN WESCHLER: Luxembourg is a tiny little nation surrounded by Germany, Belgium, and France. It’s overshadowed by its more powerful, more popular neighbors, so people never give it any thought. Taft is like that. His term was sandwiched right in between Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, two of the most exalted presidents we’ve ever had.
PAULINE CRAIG: I’ve seen Taft, Professor, the pictures as well as the man on the White House lawn Monday. And I have to tell you, he’s no tiny little Luxembourg. Though I’m sure he does know about sandwiches.
SUSAN WESCHLER: Pauline, if you invited me onto your show just to crack fat jokes—
PAULINE CRAIG: Settle down, Professor, just a little humor to break the tension.
SUSAN WESCHLER: I’ll tell you this. Give me an hour with that man, and I’ll know whether he’s William Howard Taft.
JAMES MACKLER: Professor Weschler, I expect you’ll get that chance.
PAULINE CRAIG: Director Mackler, how will President Taft’s reappearance affect the political landscape? How does it change the dynamic of the 2012 election?
JAMES MACKLER: I hardly think that’s on anyone’s mind right now.
PAULINE CRAIG: I hardly think it’s
not
. Unfortunately, President Taft’s great-granddaughter, first-term Ohio Congresswoman Rachel Taft, declined our invitation to come on the show today. Has the congresswoman spoken with her ancestor yet?
JAMES MACKLER: Congresswoman Taft is in Mexico right now with a trade delegation. The president has been in touch with her about the situation.
PAULINE CRAIG: Mark my words, America: if a Republican president from the past is back on the scene, his granddaughter in Congress just got a whole lot more interesting. We’ll be back after these messages.
FROM THE DESK OF REP. RACHEL TAFT
(Ind.–OH)
To-do list
—
Wed. 9th
—Tour three more agricultural facilities in Santiago de Querétaro
—Prep for debate over provisions of International Foods Act
—Charity lunch for orphanage in San Miguel
—Phone conference with staff about budget-tightening measures
—Remind Trevor to pick up birthday cake for Abby
—Figure out what the
hell
is up with man who appears to be resurrected great-grandfather