SISTER WRAPS A SCARF around her ears, bundles herself into a black woolen coat that hangs to her knees. It is two in the morning. She can see her breath in the near-frost chill, and the air soothes the constant arthritic ache in her joints, like fire doused to smoldering embers. Above the rooftops of the ranch houses, Sister can see the flare stacks of new gas wells burning. If she spins where she's standing, she can see five burning flares, but she knows there are hundreds, maybe thousands, in her county alone. They don't smell like anything unless she stands right underneath them. Close up, Sister smells engine grease, animal offal, wet clay—the bowels of the earth and the chemicals that strip them wafting together after the burn. Above the actual flames, the fumes and the heat distort the view, a world scrambled into waves, unrecognizable. Beyond that space, the chemicals are swallowed by the big-sky atmosphere and become invisible, which makes it easy to forget that they are still there.

She carries two gallons of bleach in a heavy canvas tote bag, and the pain in her shoulders and neck begins to spread down into her forearms, her fingers and hands, and then even her heart and her belly radiate the ache. Tonight, Sister will execute a plan she's been working out for days. She hopes it will bring her close again to God. She worries it might push him further away. She notes the absence of direct answer to her prayers, contemplates the obvious lack of instructive miracle. She is grateful for the internet, for the wealth of information available to even an aging nun, the ways the invisibility of age might shield and protect her, the ways it might be a veiled, sharp-edged gift. Floodlights illuminate the playground—the swing set, the spiral slide, the basketball hoop posts wrapped in foam to keep the children from harm should they run into them.

Behind the playground, the proposed fracking site sits dark under starlight and gilded crescent moon. There are no fences or gates surrounding it. A single bulldozer sits lonely on the empty lot. She is a little afraid, but her backbone, sturdy and expansive, a tree trunk of mud and twigs, ice and granite, has widened with new rings. The machine's cap opens just as the website said it would, and she pours both gallons of bleach into the oil reservoir.

Sister does not know whether her efforts will ultimately change anything at all, but for this moment, her joints have stopped aching. When the pain returns, suddenly, she closes her eyes. She imagines her doubt and her fear encapsulated by her pain. She imagines holding all of it in the palm of her hand, white-hot, imagines placing it humbly on an altar.