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Chapter 36: Ken & Josh's Story, 1960-1962, part 2
So...inspriation struck. Another short piece. Hopefully, I'll have time soon to write something longer and get us past the election since that's already an established fact for this TL.
The first part of this (from Joshua's POV) I actually wrote a while back. I thought I'd posted it actually.
Joshua Steiner looked out the sixth-floor window of the Roberts Building in downtown Franklin. Aloicious Roberts, the founder of the Franklin Observer, had known what he was doing when he built his headquarters, just a block off Riverside Drive and tall enough to give the nation’s paper of record a commanding view over the capital. When it had first gone up in 1889, it could look both northwards to the Congress Hall, and south to where the President resided. Now, the view north was obscured by taller buildings that had come up in the seventy-odd years that had followed. The view south, however, was a different matter.
Across the Ohio, Joshua could see President’s Square and the large bulk that was Washington House, the seat of the American Presidency. Or at least, it normally was. Not long after the First Lady’s bathtub had fallen through the floor while she was drawing a bath three years ago, Army engineers had discovered that the presidential residence was in a sorry shape. Since then, President Timothy Priest and his wife and the core of the presidential administration had taken up residence in the nearby Hamilton Place, a smaller but still grand home that normally housed the Vice President. The architects working on the restoration said that parts of Washington House might be ready for use by the next administration once it took office next year, but full occupancy of the House was still another year or two away.
The door to the office that Joshua was waiting to enter opened up, drawing his attention away from the vista and his musings. “Josh, sorry to keep you waiting! Come in!” A man in his mid-thirties stood in the doorway, shorter than Joshua’s own 6’2 frame, but with what seemed to be boundless energy inside. Phillip O’Hare, the junior politics editor and long-time friend of Joshua, had graciously agreed to an interview on the eve of the election. Joshua hoped some of what said would make it in the morning paper, part of a last drive by the party to help get Georgina Lincoln, Senator from Indiana, elected president.
“Thanks, Phil! Don’t mind if I do.” Joshua stepped inside. Organized chaos reigned inside. Papers covered Phillip’s main desk and the tops of filing cabinets and bookcases. Joshua knew his friend had a system and could find his way around the mess. Anyone else? Not a chance.
“So my friend, where do you think your lady stands when the polls open tomorrow.”
“I think she’s got a great chance. We’ve had twelve years of Nationalist rule, much of it under Nolan and even though Priest was softer, it’s been a lot for the country to bare. Minorities and the working class need relief, and I think a lot of people see that in Senator Lincoln.”
“Okay, so why not vote for Simpson. We’ve had a Liberal president before. Hell, we’ve six of them. That’s makes more Liberal presidents than the Nationalists. People like known quantities, don’t they? Don’t the vast majority of people in the country, outside of Red Indiana and Red Illinois, think of the likes of Matthias Holz and the Red Terror when they think of the CPUS?” Phillips had a wry smile on his face. He knew it was an old and tired line, and he knew Joshua knew he knew too.
“Look Phil, the Communalist Party of the United States has never supported the radical international wing of our movement. We rejected Holtz and his ilk outright from the beginning, and as we all know the Europeans did the same thing in the twenties. They were our allies in the War, for crying out loud. Lincoln and her family have a long tradition as Communalists, and they are committed to communalism by democratic means. Letting the people choose. And if people choose her tomorrow, she will bring that same commitment here to Franklin.”
The two talked for a while longer, and then Joshua ended things on a polite note so that he could leave and meet Kenneth at the headquarters building a few blocks away. “Once all this election stuff settles down, you and Candice will have to come out and have dinner. Ken has been dying to have her try a new recipe he’s found. You know he considers her the Queen of Cuisine.”
Phillip laughed. “Things might settle down for you after tomorrow, especially if your gal doesn’t win, but me? Please. One of the busiest reporting time for people at the O are in the days between election day and inauguration day. You know that. We’ll have the speculation about the vote transfer to cover if no one wins a majority. Then there are the likely cabinet picks. Then all the hullabaloo over the ceremony itself, and that gets bigger every time now that it’s broadcast live on telecinema. I’ll be lucky if I get any downtime at all between now and January.”
“Okay fair enough. Hopefully, I’m as busy as you are. Just be warned, if we don’t arrange something soon, Ken might just show up at your front door.”
“Consider me warned.” Phillip said with a smile. With that, Joshua headed out of the office and ultimately out of the Roberts Building. It was well past three, and Kenneth was probably already on his way downtown. With any luck, if he walked fast enough, Joshua could still beat him there, or at least walk into Owens Hall, the newly built national headquarters of the CPUS, at the same time as his partner.
At least, he thought that until he walked outside into the blustery cold of early November. He decided instead to walk the short distance to Union Avenue, the great north-south axis of the nation’s capital city that linked Congress Square in the north with President’s Square in the south and catch the Number 1 streetcar to take him up to the Party’s HQ.
The Number 2 Streetcar began it’s glide down Benjamin Franklin Boulevard as it sloped down the valley between Cathedral Mount and the Madison Cliffs, heading right into the heart of Franklin. Kenneth looked up from the novel he was reading to catch the afternoon sun gleaming off the spires of St. Joseph’s Cathedral to the left, perched at the top of the high point that had a commanding view of the Ohio River and the capital city itself, though with the growth of the downtown skyline St. Joe’s was no longer the highest structure in the city. But it came close. Further down the hillside, downtown Franklin rose up, with several skyscrapers of ten to fifteen stories tall, along with the thirty-story pinnacle that was Cincinnatus Tower. Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Chicago all boasted taller buildings, of course, but there was no other building that matched C-Tower in the nation’s capital. Neither the dome of the Congress Hall nor the twin arches of the George Washington Bridge came close.
Kenneth debated reading more of his novel, but decided against it, as the streetcar would arrive at his stop soon, and allow him to transfer to the Number 1, which went up and down Union Avenue. He put it in his bag and went back to looking out the window. He noticed a new billboard had gone up atop one of the medium-sized office buildings on the edge of downtown. “Quench Your Thirst with an Original Lix! Buy a Doc Tom’s Today!” The advertisement showed an attractive blonde thrusting a bottle of the fizzy drink in it’s iconic slightly rounded bottom bottle with blue packaging. Doc Tom’s Elixirs and Franklin Fizzes were battling it out as to which would be the nation’s number one cola of choice. Kenneth preferred the latter himself, having grown up on the stuff more often than having an “elixir” from the New Orleans-based company. The original Franklin Fizzes factory was only ten miles north of the capital, and Kenneth had grown up just south in Kentucky.
The streetcar pulled up to its stop, and Kenneth got out and walked down the busy sidewalk to the corner, made a right, and continued walking until he got to the stop for the Number 1. Poster’s on the side of buildings extolled passersby like himself to vote one way or another in the next day’s election. He was most familiar, of course, with the ones with the red background and yellow letters saying “Vote Lincoln!” and dominated by the artistically stylized outline portrait of Georgina Lincoln of the CPUS. With any luck, she’d be the president-elect in forty-eight hours. At least that was what both he and Joshua, and countless other Communalists across the country, were hoping for. Her posters weren’t the only ones visible, of course. The photograph of Representative Sean Orton of Ohio smiled out to those walking by, young and vibrant and a new face for the Nationalist Party. Kenneth would admit that he’d be a huge improvement on outgoing President Timothy Priest, but that wasn’t a high bar. Priest had been somewhat more moderate than his predecessor, James Nolan, also a Nationalist, but that was only by comparison, as Nolan had been a hardliner that had turned the nation down a much more conservative path when he took office nearly twelve years ago, when Kenneth was just finishing up tertiary school and beginning to think about university. It seemed as though the country had had enough of that though, and either the CPUS or the Liberal Party would occupy Washington House and the Congress Hall next January.
Just then, a bell rang out announcing the arrival of the Number 1, and Kenneth queued up to board. When he stepped inside to find a seat, he smiled. There sat Joshua, nose buried in a copy of the Observer. Kenneth sat down next to him and stared, seeing how long it would take him to notice. Joshua glanced over at the movement, started to look away and then did a double take, lowering the paper and grinning.
“Well hello, you!” Joshua said, still smiling, and he leaned over and gave a quick kiss on Kenneth’s cheek. Kenneth knew his heartbeat picked up a little bit in nervousness. His boyfriend of three years largely took such public displays for granted, having grown up in red Indianapolis before going off to college in Boston, the unofficial capital of the homophilic rights movement, but Kenneth, by contrast, had grown up in a small town south of Lexington, Kentucky, where such things were not tolerated. Joshua squeezed his hand in assurance before asking, “How was your day?”
“Oh, the usual. Geography students begging for extra time for their essays,” Kenneth began.
“Which you didn’t give, of course,” Joshua said, smirking.
“Of course not. They had the weekend. It’s not that hard to compare and contrast the United States with one of the other countries of the North American Union.”
“Did Mrs. Walkins end up seeing that guy from South Bank over the weekend?” This time, there was a more wry, mischievous look in his eye.
“Yes, she did. I think that could become a serious thing, too. She seems to really like him.”
“Good for her! She deserves a good guy after all the hard work she does with her students.”
“Agreed.” Just then, the streetcar arrived at their stop, just down the street from the four-story Owens Hall, built five years ago as the new national headquarters for the party, relocating from Indianapolis. Red banners draped down either side of the front of the building, catching in the wind but still proudly displaying the thirteen gold stars and flame of liberty that were the party’s official logo. A large banner towered over the entrance, an enlarged version of the election poster Kenneth had been so accustomed to. Joshua glanced up at the portrait as they approached the doors, commenting, “She better win tomorrow.”
“Don’t worry. She will. I have a feeling.”
“Well hopefully your ‘feeling’ is better than the one you had about the last Minutemen game. That was awful.”
Kenneth shrugged. “My political sense is generally better than my sports sense. You know that.”
“But you’re the one that actually played football in school.”
“At my father’s insistence. And it turned out I could run decently and kick every now and then. But star forward I definitely was not.” Joshua rolled his eyes. They made their way to his small office on the second floor, where Kenneth dropped off his bag and they both shed their coats before heading back downstairs to work the phones. It was going to be a long evening.