Then she returned to the shed.
The cold had settled hard outside.
Inside, the smell of old grease and metal wrapped around her.
She pulled a stool beside the winch.
For the first hour she did nothing but clean.
Wire brush.
Kerosene.
Rags.
More wire brush.
The machine slowly revealed itself.
Steel shaft.
Bronze worm wheel.
Cable drum.
Bearing housings.
Manual crank.
No transmission.
No clutch.
No obvious brake.
That bothered her.
Any winch strong enough to control a canal gate needed a way to keep the load from pulling backward.
She searched again.
No ratchet.
No locking pawl.
No brake band.
No mechanical latch.
Adah sat back.
“That makes no sense.”
The empty shed gave no answer.
She pushed the crank.
Nothing.
She examined the gear angle.
The screwlike shaft met the bronze wheel at nearly ninety degrees.
Harold had shown her a similar arrangement once on an old feed mixer.
Worm gear.
Slow.
Powerful.
She remembered him explaining that the small gear could drive the large gear easily, but the large gear sometimes could not drive the small one backward.
Sometimes.
She looked closer.
Could that be the reason?
Adah tried the handle again.
Frozen.
She went to the shelf and found penetrating oil.
She soaked the bearing edges.
Then the gear teeth.
Then the shaft.
She left the machine alone.
Saturday morning she tried again.
Nothing.
The next Saturday she cleaned more hardened grease.
Nothing.
Third Saturday.
Nothing.
Fourth Saturday.
The handle moved.
Barely.
Adah froze.
She marked the original position with chalk.
Then pushed again.
An eighth of a turn.
A rough metallic groan came from inside the housing.
She stopped immediately.
Most people, Harold used to say, broke old machinery during the first moment it started cooperating.
Excitement made them force it.
Adah added oil.
Waited ten minutes.
Moved the crank backward.
Then forward.
A quarter turn.
She smiled.
By afternoon, the shaft completed one full revolution.
By evening, the worm wheel moved.
Slowly.
Heavily.
But smoothly enough that Adah could feel the mechanism beginning to remember what movement was.
She wrote in a notebook:
March 27
Crank freed.
Approx. 1 turn per 14 sec without load.
No visible tooth damage.
Worm wheel bronze.
Need cable inspection.
The notebook had belonged to Harold.
Most pages contained measurements, seed varieties, machinery part numbers, and weather notes.
Adah had begun using the unused half after his funeral.
At first she felt guilty.
Then she realized Harold would have been annoyed by blank paper going to waste.
Over the next month she rebuilt the winch.
Not beautifully.
Functionally.
She replaced two grease fittings.
Removed the cable.
Cleaned the drum.
Changed one bearing.