Morning broke over the Kootenai in silver and gold, the river gliding smooth under a sky that promised clear weather and just enough breeze to keep the blackflies second-guessing their life choices. East of Libby, the old steel-and-timber span waited like a tired workhorse—useful, stubborn, and half held together with prayer and rope.
Libby’s crew rolled up in two trucks and a flatbed stacked with lumber, angle plate, and the kind of hardware that makes a bridge forget it’s old. Hank hopped down first, tipping his hat toward the water as if greeting a neighbor. Marta followed with a clipboard and a smile that told people exactly where to be without raising her voice. Mark lugged a generator welder like it was a picnic cooler and muttered, “If this thing trips one more breaker, I’m teaching it to swim.” Gabriel slung a coil of rope over his shoulder, the inevitable coffee thermos dangling from his belt like sacred treasure.
Thane came last, quiet and broad-shouldered in the morning light, claws clicking once on the steel grating as he stepped onto the span. He scanned the girders, the missing planks, and the scabbed-over welds where raiders had cut and run months back. He could smell the faint ghost of burnt metal and hear the river chewing the pilings below. Fixable, he decided. More than that—worth fixing.
From the treeline, the forest exhaled a handful of shadows that unfurled into wolves. Sable wasn’t with them today; she’d sent a crew with a nod and a single word—“Help.” Rime led, gray and calm, with three younger ferals at his flank: Marn (tilt to his ears that shouted enthusiasm), a black-furred she-wolf who’d fallen in love with radios and now stared curiously at every coil of wire, and a brawny cinnamon male who looked at the timber stacks like he’d found a new toy.
Hank met them at the end of the span. “Morning,” he said, like greeting a neighbor’s dog that could also bench-press a tractor. “We’re glad to have you.”
Rime dipped his head. “We lift. You point.”
“Deal,” Hank said, smiling.
They got to it.
The first hour was measuring, marking, and arguing cheerfully about millimeters like they’d discovered a new religion. Mark hammered chalk lines across the decking, then strung snap lines with surgical precision. Gabriel anchored a pulley high on the truss, toes curling on narrow flanges, humming as if being twenty feet above the river was just a more scenic place to drink coffee.
“Rime,” Thane called, voice carrying low and sure across the span. “Let’s swing those timbers.”
Rime answered with action. He and the cinnamon male each shouldered a beam meant for four humans. The humans stared. It wasn’t the raw power that stunned them—it was the grace: claws finding grip on rusted steel, shoulders rolling, weight shifting like water poured from one cup to another. A young carpenter named Ellie actually stopped mid-bolt and forgot to breathe.
“Okay,” she whispered. “That’s not fair.”
Marn did a little hop at the end of the beam, balancing it like a gymnast on a rail. “Strong,” he said, delighted.
“Down, show-off,” Rime rumbled, but his eyes warmed with pride.
They seated the first run of deck planks like it was a dance—wolves holding, humans aligning, Thane setting each piece by feel and sound. He used the heel of his hand to thump—solid, solid, dull—then rotated a plank a quarter inch and it sang right. “There,” he said, and Ellie scrambled with the carriage bolts, grinning like she’d been let in on a secret.
The welder coughed to life. Mark lowered his visor and ran a beautiful bead along a new gusset plate, sparks spitting fat and bright. The black-furred radio-wolf leaned in, eyes wide behind borrowed safety goggles.
“Bright metal rain,” she whispered.
“Hot metal rain,” Mark corrected, not looking up. “Trust the goggles.”
She nodded solemnly, tail flicking. “Trust… goggles.”
An hour later, the cinnamon male decided to “test” a support truss mid-lift by stepping onto it. The crane—hand-cranked with two humans grunting—buckled and squealed.
“Hey!” Hank barked. “Get your four-hundred-pound curiosity off my chain, please and thanks!”
The wolf sprang back, landing in a perfect crouch beside Thane, contrite. “Wanted to know if strong.”
“It will be,” Thane said, deadpan. “After we install it.”
Gabriel, from somewhere up in the truss with a harness he mostly wore for the humans’ benefit, laughed. “We’re inventing a new trade: structural inspection by pouncing.”
Marn, incredibly earnest, raised a paw. “We can bounce also,” he offered.
“Please don’t,” three humans said in weary chorus.
By late morning, rhythm settled in: lift, seat, align, bolt, weld. Wolves moved like cranes with instincts, humans like metronomes with tool belts. A pair of older townsfolk set up a folding table near the abutment with canteens and sandwiches. The river chuckled to itself below, admiring the industry.
Lunch was a cultural exchange. Wolves stared at human sandwiches like someone had made handheld magic. Humans watched wolves eat like someone had invented a new unit of volume.
“It’s… bread around food,” Marn marveled, holding a ham-and-cheese delicately, as if it might bolt. “Why hide food in pillow?”
“Because it’s tidy,” Marta said, biting hers. “And portable.”
“Like stack-meat,” he said, impressed, and took a careful bite. His eyes widened. “Stack-meat tastes good.”
Gabriel almost choked on laughter. “We’re calling them that forever now. ‘Two stack-meats with mustard, please.’”
Ellie slid a second sandwich toward the cinnamon wolf. “You, big guy—ever try pickles?”
He sniffed suspiciously. Tried one. His ears shot straight up. “Sharp water,” he exclaimed, delighted, and immediately wanted more.
Thane didn’t eat yet. He walked the span, a slow patrol, checking bolts with fingertips and weight. Where a decking board didn’t sit flush, he crouched and set it right, coaxing metal and wood into agreement. When he finally joined the lunch crowd, Gabriel slid his own thermos toward him with the reverence of offering a relic.
“Coffee,” Thane said, softly, as if naming a rare bird. He took a long drink, eyes closing for a second. “Bless you.”
“Say it again,” Gabriel grinned. “But slower.”
“Eat your stack-meat,” Thane said without looking at him, and Gabriel’s laugh came out loud and bright.
In the early afternoon a dark smear of cloud pulled itself over the ridge and decided to try its luck. Rain spit down in a sudden squall and turned the steel slick. They covered the welder and stowed the loose hardware, but one of Hank’s deputies—Tommy, tall and too confident—stepped the wrong way on a narrow flange.
His boot skidded. He pinwheeled once, twice—fingers clawing air—and then there was nothing under him but twenty feet of bad ideas and river.
He didn’t fall.
A gray shape blurred, caught him by the back of his jacket, and hung there—upside down, four paws latched to the under-flange like a living clamp. For a full second the world held that picture: Tommy gawking at the river, the wolf grunting with the effort, rain drumming a hard rhythm around them.
Then Thane was there, hauling Tommy up by the collar with one hand and trading the weight smoothly to Hank, who hauled him to safety with a swear that had three syllables and a prayer attached.
Tommy sat down hard and started laughing in that slightly hysterical way of the newly lucky. “I… uh… I meant to do that.”
Hank slapped his shoulder. “You meant to give me a heart attack, maybe.” He looked up at the gray wolf still clamped under the flange. “You ever consider joining the fire department?”
The wolf bared his teeth in what was almost a smile. “We do not like ladders,” he said, and casually spidered back to the beam like gravity was a rumor.
The rain ran out of courage in ten minutes and wandered off to bother some other valley. The sun returned hotter, the steel steamed, and the work picked up again, lighter now, laughter tucked into the joints.
Rime watched Thane settle a gusset with a mallet and a whisper of pressure, then spoke, low enough only Thane would hear. “Your people trust you with their weight.”
“They trust all of us,” Thane said. “That’s the point.”
“Good pack,” Rime said, and Thane’s answering nod had the weight of a vow.
By late afternoon, the last deck plank slid into place with a sound that made everyone pause—like a final puzzle piece finding home. Ellie spun the nut on the last carriage bolt and thumped it with her palm, grinning at the satisfying thunk.
Mark, visor down, ran the last weld bead along a plate so clean it could’ve been calligraphy. He snapped the hood up, wiped his brow with the back of his wrist, and announced, “If this bridge could talk, it’d flirt with me.”
Gabriel cupped his hands around his mouth and called to the valley, “Don’t encourage him!”
Hank did the ceremonial test he always did: walked the length of the span alone first, then jumped once at midspan—just enough to feel the give. The bridge didn’t complain. It hummed—quiet, strong, sure.
“Alright,” he said. “Let’s do it proper.”
They lined up shoulder to shoulder—humans and wolves—and walked across together. Boots, paws, claws. A river below, a town behind, a future in front. Somewhere near midspan Gabriel began a drumbeat on the guardrail with a wrench; two kids at the abutment caught the rhythm and clapped; a couple shopkeepers down the road heard the noise and wandered up to see.
On the far side, Marta climbed onto the rail and raised both hands. “Citizens of Libby,” she called, and then glanced at Rime with a quick, warm smile, “and citizens of the North—”
Rime straightened a little, surprised and pleased.
“—we declare this bridge open and in service,” Marta finished. “May it carry more food than fear, more laughter than grief, and more neighbors than enemies.”
“Here here!” Hank barked, and someone whooped. Ellie let out a short, triumphant scream. The wolves lifted muzzles, a low, rolling harmony that folded into the sound of the river like it had been waiting for a counterpart.
Thane didn’t howl—he rarely did in town—but the sound settled into him. He looked across the deck at Rime. The gray wolf tilted his head. No words were necessary. This was the work.
They spent the last light of day policing the site—sweeping up cuttings, stacking spare timber, stowing harnesses. Gabriel lounged against a post and taught Marn to tap a beat with a socket wrench without denting the railing. (“You’re a natural, kid—light wrists.” “Light… wrists.” “Exactly.”)
Tommy, newly humble, shook the upside-down rescuer’s hand with both of his. “Buy you a beer sometime,” he said.
“We like meat better,” the wolf replied, agreeable.
“Done.”
As the sun shouldered into the ridgeline and stained the river copper, Thane walked the span one last time. The steel felt different under his feet now—less brittle, more certain. He paused at the crown and watched the current stitch light into long gold threads downstream.
Rime padded up beside him, silent as thought. They stood together a while, doing the kind of work leaders do best when the shouting’s finished—nothing, and everything.
“Will Sable be pleased?” Thane asked at last.
Rime’s answer was a smile in his voice. “She will say nothing. And keep standing here too long.”
Thane’s mouth tugged. “Then we understand each other.”
They turned back toward Libby. The town’s lamps were blinking awake down the road, and if you listened hard you could hear, faint and stubborn, a radio in somebody’s open window playing a song they all knew by heart.
Behind them, the bridge held. Ahead of them, laughter. Between those two, a valley that—slowly, stubbornly—was learning how to live.