Senderovsky thought of the high beams at the end of his driveway, the falling elm branch nearly cutting short his time on earth. “What color was the truck?”
“What? Why would that matter?”
He ran out the door to find the best reception and, an hour later, a large Ford was raising gravel beneath its boatlike frame, and from the top of the hill Karen and Senderovsky could already make out the tan felt Stetson perching on the head of its driver.
* * *
—
State Trooper Burns wore a blue surgical mask that did nothing to conceal the squareness of his jaw. Given everything that had happened in the recent history of policing in the country, Karen found his good looks annoying. “One second while I get a mask,” Karen said.
“No need to, ma’am,” the trooper said, friendly. He had been kind enough to take off his sunglasses, or maybe that was pro forma. His eyes were blue to the point of caricature.
They ran through the nature of the incident. “And you’re sure he was trying to hit you?” Trooper Burns said. “You say he was trying to make a curve.”
“He was trying to scare us. Isn’t that a crime? We’re two Asians wearing masks.”
“I don’t quite see.”
“You don’t quite see?”
Senderovsky touched her arm. “She’s talking from a political standpoint,” he said.
Karen shook off his hand. “I’m saying it could be a bias crime,” she said. She did not like the meekness of her own voice. If she could shout at white men in hoodies back in the Valley, why couldn’t she stand her ground with a policeman on the East Coast?
The trooper made some notations. The arrival of his cruiser at the top of the hill began to rouse the colonists from their usual afternoon torpor. Vinod had come out of the bungalow and Masha was coming down the cedar steps from her office in the main house. （Only Dee and the Actor remained upstairs lost in her new travails.） They gathered around, trying to catch small bits of detail. A rogue pickup truck had tried to kill Karen and Nat? Masha immediately ran into Karen’s bungalow, where Nat had been deposited, to see if her daughter was okay, finding her adrift in a usual midday monologue （Vinod her patient listener）， but no more anxious than usual.
“And what color was the truck?” Trooper Burns was asking as his gaze followed Vinod’s skirtlike lungi, and Senderovsky’s the single black stripe running down the trooper’s trousers.
“Gray, I think,” Karen said. “I’m not sure.”
“Do you think we could ask your daughter?” the trooper asked.
“Again, she’s not my daughter,” Karen said.
“She’s my daughter,” Senderovsky said. “Vinod, would you mind getting her?”
Nat, Masha, and Vinod soon walked back up the flagstone path. “I’m the mother,” Masha said, preemptively. “Nat, honey, when you were walking with Aunt Karen, a truck may have broken the rules of safe driving—”
“Just like Daddy does!” Nat shouted.
“In any case, he came too close,” Masha said. “Do you remember any details about the truck, Nat?”
“No. It just came too fast.”
“Do you remember the color?” the trooper asked.
“I think it was gray,” Karen said.
“I think it was green,” Nat said. “Like dark forest green.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t black?” Senderovsky asked. “Did it have strange decals on the back?”
“What?” Karen said. “No. It wasn’t black. Where do you get black? You weren’t even there. And what decals?”
Senderovsky looked around the assembled colonists and sighed. “Nat,” he said, “could you go into Mommy’s office and watch videos for just a tiny bit?”
“No, I want to stay out here!” Nat shouted. “This is exciting!”
“Honey,” both Masha and Karen said at once, but Karen had already bent down on one knee, taken both of Nat’s hands, and looked her in the eye.
“Okay.” The child spoke so placidly, with such rare understanding and obedience, that Masha looked away from her and Karen and toward the squat bungalow she shared with her husband, toward a frontal mass of grayness that was drawing upon them, promising another summer storm, along with the expensive mess of more mauled tree limbs and possibly the delight of double rainbows after the fact.
“I haven’t wanted to alarm anyone,” Senderovsky said when his daughter had left, “but for a while now there have been some disturbances, which I thought maybe were accidental. But now I think they were not.” The trooper took note of his speech and wondered if he was a foreigner or mentally ill or both.