Mike Johnson Will Tend To Your Lawn Now
· The Atlantic
“Heaven forbid, if we lose this majority or whatever, I don’t know what my next chapter of life is, I’m just open to it. And if God moves on our hearts and says we should, you know, go back to my hometown of Shreveport and start a lawn business, I’ll do that with equal fervor. I mean, I just want to be of my highest and best use to God and to my country.”
— Mike Johnson, to Fox News’s Aishah Hasnie
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Mike Johnson finished his circuit of the lawn on his riding mower, dismounted, and stared at the tree. It was an old tree, large and ornamental. Yet something about the branches was wrong. But what? If only he could ask Donald Trump for advice!
No—this was his new job, his lawn-care business. It was going to be a lot more work than he had anticipated. There should be more jobs like speaker of the House, without any major responsibilities except to sit at the feet of the president and gaze at him in silent adoration. Now Johnson felt like he was working all the time. And, worse, he had to direct his own activities.
But after losing the majority, he had been left with no choice. He could not seek election to the minority leadership. Minority leadership? That smacked of DEI. The lawns of Shreveport needed him, and he would answer.
The biggest question had been what to call the business. Finally, he decided on Mike Johnson Total Landscaping, an homage to his former patron.
It was hard to figure out how to begin without Trump’s guiding hand. He knew some things about Trump’s attitude toward lawns, but not all. Grass, he knew, had a life, like people. And trees were bad. Trees were the enemy. To cut down 400 trees as quickly as possible was a great act. Pools were generally good—some, but not others. He had made notes of all of this, but there were still so many blanks to fill in. Were grassroots movements good or bad? How could you tell if something was a weed? It was hard to think for himself after so many months out of practice.
Occasionally he thought of the time when he had been speaker of the House. What a strange time! It almost felt like a dream. What a strange job, too. He had understood that the speaker of the House was third in line to the presidency, and therefore it behooved him to remain in careful seclusion from any kind of disturbing news, so that if he were called upon to serve, he would be rested and ready. Yet people were always asking him frustrating questions, as though he were meant to be keeping up on things, approving or disapproving of events, or even taking an active role in them. But he had known better: His purpose was to serve the president. Such a funny title, given that! “Speaker of the House.” He wondered what house it was. The White House, maybe.
Since leaving that role, he’d had much more time to catch up on news. Astounding how much had happened in the country since he left Shreveport! He had been wondering why he saw so few other landscapers. He heard from his friends at Greenwater Services that there had been some roving gangs of masked men making people frightened to leave home. He also heard that there was a war of some kind? Gasoline was certainly expensive, but he had to keep his mower running somehow.
Now that he had finally caught up on all the news, he’d started listening to a book on tape: the U.S. Constitution. What he’d learned disturbed him.
“Did you know about this?” he had asked his wife, at the end of his first day trimming hedges.
“What?”
“Apparently, there are three equal branches of government. Congress is actually the first one mentioned. Before the president, even. Article I!” He frowned. “I had no idea. Equal branches.”
“What do you think it means?” she said. She sounded worried.
He’d kept listening. “Did you know?” he said, the next afternoon. “The leader of that equal branch of government—do you know what that job is called?”
She shook her head.
“The speaker of the House,” he said. “Isn’t that funny?”
She frowned. “But that’s the same name as your old job,” she said.
It was a strange coincidence, he thought. Nothing more. Still, sometimes, he wondered.
Now he stared at the tree. Something was the matter with its branches, but he did not know what to do to fix it. Cut the strong one? Cut the weak one, maybe? If only Donald Trump were here. He would be sure to know what to do.