In this way, a pre-existing alliance of persons might find that an unfamiliar person has moved in with them. They may not know at the outset for how long the stranger intends to stay, until, as time goes on, the stranger is no longer such a stranger. In time everyone begins to know a little, about each other. Perhaps the stranger, as in our case, intended neither to stay nor to leave, and was innocent of any intention whatsoever. What then?
This is how families are formed, in our experience. They move around, if they have to, and opportunities open up, or opportunities once wide open are no longer available, and in the way of trees and grasses, or cats and cities, or parking lots and automobiles, or many other things one could name, if one wished, there is a continual shifting and jostling and becoming or unbecoming, where things go along unchanged, then change abruptly. In short, our life, too, has changed, and not changed, and then it has changed; or the change has been, that all at once it is no longer changing.
So it comes to pass we are pursuing our mission in the country, delivering the nuclear items of unclear origin, but carefully wrapped, to persons not quite known, in a place we hope we are able to find in time for the exchange. We used to go along these roads in the country, our father and, yes, we went along the dim lanes where the roads were few, and under cover of the dark trees, though it is clear to us now how little attention we paid, to where we were, or how we had got there. We did not believe we could have got back by ourselves, we put such trust in him where to turn — which our father did, impulsively and without warning — so that in our vagueness, nodding off against the vent window, we were caught off guard, knocked against the windshield, bruising a shoulder on the dashboard in more than one instance, even when no turn was likely to surprise us, when all the turns, at last, were known. Unless it was a turn we had never made together.
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