A Scar in the Spillway

Three red work gloves hung from the rail. One had Jessa's split seam. The south gate kept knocking below them, a dry tin note that climbed the stair and tapped the loose filling in her left molar, then ran on into the wheel housing where it set the bracket bolts to shaking.

Bad timing.

Ivo stood on the far span with the tool roll, cut off by the snapped catwalk and a gap wide enough to drop a man into the sluice channel. Jessa kept one hand on the chain block and the other on the crowbar, because the counterweight had slipped two teeth and the wheel frame had started to sing against its seat. The floor under the housing shivered in short pulses, each one carrying grit under her boots. She had five minutes, maybe less, before the tide marker reached the second notch. No more than that. The room smelled of machine oil, wet rope, and iron that had sat in water too long. Her left shoulder hung lower than the right under the harness, and the strap there bit every time the gate struck its seat.

'Hold the line,' she said.

Ivo lifted two fingers, the missing ones on his right hand folded into the gesture stump-first, and tapped the valve cap twice. Still clear. Good enough.

Jessa set the crowbar under the chain block lug and took up on it in slow bites. The steel complained. The load gave a little, then settled back with a grind that came through her boots. Not enough. The wheel wanted one more turn and the frame wanted to split before it gave it. She nudged the block another notch, then another, and the ratchet answered with a sick little click that set the red gloves on the rail to swinging by a finger's width.

She slid the split pin out from the seam of her left glove and held it between her teeth while she worked the bar higher. Tiny thing. Bent from old use, bright at the scratch. If the pawl walked, the gate would drop three inches and shave the stop clean off. She pushed the pin back into her palm and kept on the load.

That was the job. Keep the thing moving. Keep it alive. Leave the rest for the next man with better luck.

The west hatch stood open behind her, a narrow slice of dry stair and clean air that led up toward the service deck. She could have sent Ivo through first. Could have told him to take it and keep the tool roll tight to his chest. Instead she shut the hatch after her own shoulder cleared it and left the latch resting flush against the frame. No reason to leave a door open.

The gate answered with another hard knock. Somewhere past the room, Harlan Pike's crew dragged a chain along the catwalk and the sound cut short, one clean snip in the dark space beyond the wheel room.

By the time Jessa got the wheel housing to take another half-turn, the gauge on the wall had crawled past the black mark. The brass face was pitted with old water spots, one of them green at the edge, and the needle sat at a tilt that looked almost personal. It did not belong there. It belonged in line, flat against the notch, and instead it kept wobbling like a loose tooth.

The south gate struck again. The frame gave a low moan.

'You stay there,' Jessa said.

Ivo answered with two taps on the valve cap. Then, after a beat, he called, 'The cut's wider.'

'Use the brace rail.'

'Which brace rail?'

'The one on your left.'

'That one is gone.'

Of course it was.

She swung the wheel key through the eye of the spindle and gave it a quarter turn. The housing tightened under her hands. Grease made the ferrule slick. She took the edge of the crowbar in both palms and drove it against the ratchet teeth until the metal flattened against the stop block. The load shifted. A fist-sized flake of rust broke loose from the bracket and dropped through the grating with a dry tick. The sound landed neat and hard in the lower channel, where the water answered in a thin slap against the concrete lip.

Harlan Pike was on the far side of the span. His coat caught on the pipe frame when he crossed the broken section, one hand on the cable rail, the other on a black-handled cutter. He did not hurry. He moved like a man carrying an invoice.

'You are making the work worse,' he called.

'You cut the catwalk.'

'Because the catwalk was already failing.'

'The gate is failing.'

'Then it failed where pressure lives.'

He kept his voice level, all counts and clean edges. It made the line between his mouth and the pipe rack look colder than the steel around him. Jessa jammed her shoulder into the wheel and took the load on bone and strap. The old crush on that side flared hot. She kept the pressure on until the frame settled. Good. For a breath. Then the ratchet skipped one tooth and all the work came back at once.

Too much slack. Too little time.