Imaru that! Imaru will! Imaru must!Or, could be, it was just nerves, panic, the bedlam of sudden sorrow.I hit Gum Creek kind of fast and the Volvo bounced angrily. I kept the headlights on, but seeing the rocks didn’t smooth them any. I feared ambush on the main road. The Volvo jostled and shimmied and rose and fell across the dry white roughness of the creek bed. My head thumped the roof, my butt felt the pain.I drove on beyond the money garden a piece, kept on until Gum Creek was about to become the Howl River. I steered up the bank, but it was too steep, and I ruined a headlight against a willow sapling. I backed up and got a better run at the bank and churned the tires and booted the gas pedal and, finally, basically grated the Volvo through the dirt and debris. That cost me the muffler, but I crested onto clear ground, the back lawn of Tararum.The car had acquired a tilt, and an angle. It didn’t go exactly where aimed anymore, but still traveled more or less toward the target, only by a challenging sort of oblique flank trajectory.At the cupola I noted the narrow walkway that wended elegantly between the trees and back up to the big house, the drumstick palace.
