The draft through the eastern loading hatch of the tram shed carried the smell of cold bitter salt dust and stale bilge water. Outside on Platform Four, two night-shift switchmen were using a wooden mallet to knock ice from the turnout levers, the dull thock of wood against frozen iron echoing through the floor beams like an irregular heartbeat.
Doma reached into the deep pocket of her canvas apron, her thick fingers rustling against dried bean pods and bits of twine. Then she produced a flat, dented tin of sheep fat. The tin had originally held boot grease from the border guard post. The painted soldier on the lid was half-scratched away, replaced by a grease-pencil label in Doma’s sharp, backward-slanting handwriting: FOOD GRADE / PURE FAT. She pried the lid open with the edge of her thumbnail, scooped a generous glob of white grease. Then she smeared it firmly across the fresh brass scratch Len had scraped with his emery cloth.
“Raw brass rots in sulfur air,” she said. Her voice dropped back into the steady, clockwork order of an old supply boss inspecting tools before a winter march. “You know what the damp in this valley does to unsealed metal. In three hours, the acid from the chimney pipes will eat into the exposed grain. That turned the yellow metal to green rust. Then the next time you tap the skirt against an iron ladder, the whole sound bow will crack from the lip to the crown. You’ll…
