Intensity

horrendous bang and clatter.
        The skylight was undamaged.
        Chyna swung the hammer relentlessly. Each blow reverberated in the plastic overhead but also through all of her strained and weary muscles, through her aching bones.
        The motor home was at least fifteen years old, and this appeared to be the original factory-installed skylight. It wasn't Plexiglas but some less formidable material; over many years of sunshine and bad weather, the plastic had grown brittle. Finally the rectangular panel cracked along one edge of the frame. Chyna hammered at the leading point of the fissure, making it grow all the way to the corner, then along the narrow end, and then along the other three-foot length.
        She had to pause several times to catch her breath and to change the hammer from hand to hand. At last the panel rattled loosely in its frame; it now seemed to be secured only by splinters of material along the fissures and by the uncracked fourth edge.
        Chyna dropped the hammer, slowly flexed her hands a few times to work some of the stiffness out of them, and then put both palms flat against the plastic. Grunting with the effort, she pushed upward as she climbed onto the second step of the stool.
        With a brittle splintering of plastic, the panel lifted an inch, jagged edges squeaking against each another. Then it bent backward at its fourth side, creaking, resisting her… resisting… until she cried out wordlessly in frustration and, finding new strength, pushed even harder. Abruptly the fourth side cracked all the way through, with a bang! as loud as a gunshot.
        She pushed the panel out through the ceiling. It rattled across the roof and dropped to the driveway.
        Through the hole above her head, Chyna saw clouds suddenly slide away from the moon. Cold light bathed her upturned face, and in the bottomless sky was the clean white fire of stars.

    
        Chyna backed the motor home off the driveway and alongside the front of the house, parallel to the porch and as close to it as she could get. She let the big vehicle roll slowly, anxious not to tear up the thick grass, because under it the ground might be muddy even half a day after the rain had stopped. She didn't dare bog down.
        When she was in position, she put the vehicle in park and set the emergency brake. She left the engine running.
        In the short hall at the back of the motor home, the stepstool had fallen over. She put it upright, climbed the two steps, and stood with her head in the night air, above the open frame of the broken-out skylight.
        She wished the stool had a third step. She needed to muscle herself out of the hallway, and she was at a less advantageous angle than she would have liked.
        She placed her hands flat on the roof on opposite sides of the twenty-inch-wide rectangular opening and struggled to lever her body out of the motor home. She strained so hard that she could feel the tendons flaring between her neck and shoulders, her pulse pounding like doomsday drums in her temples and carotid arteries, every muscle in her arms and across her back quivering with the effort.
        Pain and exhaustion seemed certain to thwart her. But then she thought of Ariel in the living-room armchair: rocking back and forth, hugging herself, a faraway look in her eyes, her lips parted in what might have been a silent scream. That image of the girl empowered Chyna, put her in touch with hitherto unknown resources. Her shaking arms slowly straightened, pulling her body out of the hallway, and inch by inch she kicked her feet as if she were a swimmer ascending from the depths. At last her elbows locked with her arms at full extension, and she heaved forward, out through the skylight, onto the roof.
        On the way, her sweater caught on small fragments of plastic that bristled from the skylight frame. A few jagged points pierced the knit material and stung her belly, but she broke loose of them.
        She crawled forward, rolled onto her back, hiked her sweater, and felt her stomach to see how badly she had been cut. Blood wept from a couple of shallow punctures, but she wasn't hurt seriously.
        From far off in the night came the howls of at least two injured dogs. Their pathetic cries were so filled with fear, vulnerability, misery, and loneliness that Chyna could hardly bear to listen.
        She eased to the edge of the roof and looked down at the