For another, he'd still be teaching the fifth grade.
Mearl Streep's rise to fame changed all that. Between the calls at night and the scrawls on the blackboard of James L. Reid Grammar School in the daytime, Mearl Streep had been practically drummed out of polite Iowa society.
In the beginning, it was only miserable. Then his brother passed on, and Mearl inherited the family farm. That made it bearable. Nobody cared what a simple corn farmer called himself.
But Mearl's heart wasn't in corn. It was in being somebody, and being Mearl Streep was a plain losing proposition.
"How the hell do I get me some respect?" he asked his dog, the only companion he had who didn't snicker behind his back.
Old Blue barked a time or two and lay down and began snoring.
"Life is against me. That's all there is to it," he muttered.
Old Blue rolled over and passed gas.
"And if it's against me, then by damn, I'm going to be against it," Mearl said firmly, fanning the air with his seed cap.
It was one thing to blow off steam on a farm in the middle of the Corn State where no one cared. It was another to keep doing it. Mearl got tired of listening to his own complaints and took to listening to the radio.
There were some pretty interesting new personalities on the radio during the good days before the Great Flood. First there was Thrush Limburger. He really got the blood coursing. But after a while, he started sounding more and more like an eastern windbag, shifting with the changing political winds.
Others came. They went, too. Louder, more feisty than the ones before. After a while, all the sound and fury died down and there was nothing good on. Nothing for a hardworking but bored corn farmer to listen to.
Then interesting things started happening. Ruby Ridge. Waco. Folks were talking about how Washington was going to be moving against the people pretty soon, and some of the loudest voices in radio started disappearing. Folks blamed bad ratings, but Mearl wondered. It sounded vaguely sinister. So Mearl bought himself a shortwave set and took up listening to Mark from Minnesota, a program devoted to warning folks about the coming insurrections with the black helicopters and the New World Order and suchlike.
Not four months after Waco, came the Great Flood of 1993. The hundred-year flood, they called it.
It wiped out Mearl Streep. He barely escaped the moving wall of black puddinglike mud that rolled over his farm after the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers overflowed in the wake of a four-hour goosedrowner of a rainstorm. Eight dirtdrumming inches fell. A crest of water twenty-seven feet high rolled off the Raccoon and ran smack into the swollen Des Moines.
From that tumultuous collision, it spread out in all directions like a cold wrath of the Almighty coming to clear off the earth.
That night, Mearl sat on high ground in his red Dodge pickup and listened to Mark from Minnesota proclaim God's honest truth.
"This so-called flood was no act of God. God don't flood the farms of God-fearing people. This was Washington. They are experimenting with their weather-control devices and figure the best people to try it on are farmers. What do farmers know? They get rained on, droughted on and hailed on all the time. They'll get over it. Well, listen my brothers out there in the heartland. Don't get over it. Get even. You who are organized into militia, get ready. Those who aren't, what are you waiting for?"
"By damn, what am I waiting for?" Mearl asked himself over the relentless hammering of raindrops on his truck roof.
Thus was born the Iowa Disorganized Subterranean Militia, led by Commander Mearl Streep.
At first, no one wanted to join. There were no militia in Iowa. It was a peaceful state and folks were too busy cleaning up the black mud and trying to get back to normal to join anything but the unemployment line.
When the first unemployment checks ran out, Mearl started doing business. First, all he had was a squad but before long, he had himself an honest-to-God unit.
They trained in the deserted cornfields taken over by the banks. If they happened upon a banker, sometimes they used him for target practice. It was only fair. An eye for an eye. An ear for an ear. And Mearl wasn't talking about corn.
For three years, Mearl had drilled his men, and trained them to prepare for the black helicopters that were certain to fill the skies when zero hour came.
No one knew when zero hour was, but he was all but certain it would take place on April 19.
"Why April 19?" a new recruit asked, as they invariably did.
"That was the hallowed date of the shot heard round the world, in Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1775. That's when the First American Revolution started. In 1991, another shot was taken against tyranny at a place called Ruby Ridge on the same date. Two years later, also on April 19, the battleground was called Waco. These events turned the tide against the new tyrants so bad that on April 19, 1995, they created a diversionary tactic, blowing up that federal building in Oklahoma City.
That was the turning point. Everything after that is what we called AO-After Oklahoma. We are now at war with our own unlawful government. And we gotta drill for the next April 19 or bend our proud backs under the iron boot of Washington."
Two entire April 19s passed without incident.
Then they came. Exactly on time.
First it was the Garret cornfields. Stripped by what was described as a wind that wasn't a wind.
"What was it?" Streep demanded after rushing to the scene in his camouflage uniform on the latest April 19.
"It sounded like a cross between a tiny twister and a locust swarm," Gordon Garret himself had told him.
"Sounds like Washington to me."
"I don't know what it was, but it bankrupted me," Garret said dejectedly.
"Then you might want to take a gander at this," said Mearl, pulling an IDSM membership form and introductory booklet from the cargo pocket of his cammies.
Garret read right along.
"That'll be thirty dollars, your first quarter's dues," Mearl added.
"I'm flat busted."
"No man is busted who marches with the Iowa Disorganized Subterranean Militia," promised Mearl Streep.
The twister from hell had hit other farms, too. Not all of them in a straight line. A number were skipped.
"Collaborators," muttered Mearl. "That proves Washington's behind this. No storm or swarm picks its targets. Look at this."
They looked. Everyone saw it plain. It was as if some supernatural thing had taken random bites out of the waving green prairies and fields. But the bites weren't random. Any farm that was hit was completely destroyed. Those that were spared were absolutely untouched, not an ear as much as nibbled on. In his mind, Mearl saw them as collaborationist farms. And there were more of them than there were of the downtrodden. A whole lot more.
"We gotta take the fight to the enemy now," Mearl exhorted.
"To Washington?"
"We are gonna take Washington back for the Godfearing people," promised Mearl Streep. "First we gotta put the fear of God into Washington."
Chapter 26
When Remo returned home with the dawn, Grandma Mulberry met him with a disapproving expression and a short, pungent oath.
"Slut."
"You're pushing it, you old bag of bones. Nothing happened."
"Not mean redhead, but you. Out all night. Shame on you. Tomcat slut."
Remo inched closer. "You know I can break your neck like a twig?" he said in a low growl.
The old woman sneered back. "Master Chiun bounce your butt over moon if you do."
Remo's teeth met with a click. His hands floated up as if they had lives of their own. They hovered at choking height.
Catching himself, Remo dropped them to his sides.
"Give me a second," he told Jean, who observed the entire exchange in silent bemusement.