JOE SHOES HORSES; that’s his main job. He drives a truck with a propane forge and an anvil stand and a bunch of tongs and hammers inside, and all of this is so heavy that the back of his truck tilts down. HAPPY HOOFER FARRIER SERVICE, his truck says. There are a lot of horse people around here, so he keeps busy enough. He stops at my house between calls. At first it was just random, him stopping by to see if I was home, but now we plan ahead.

Joe doesn’t talk about his past much, but I somehow get the idea that he’s always been pretty shy, which is why he prefers to work with horses and not people. I’m fairly certain that Joe’s experience with women has not been that extensive, because of this shyness, which is surprising given how much he knows intuitively about a woman’s body — or my body, at least.

Joe spends a lot of time looking at my body, with his hands and with his eyes, and it pleases me to be with a man who really pays attention to me. We’ve only been seeing each other for a month, but there’s the potential for a long-term relationship here. Neither of us has ever had one, and the idea makes us uncomfortable, so we haven’t talked about it, but I can feel us both wondering where this is going. Should we make an agreement to hang on? No, maybe this relationship should remain suspended in the present. Talk of the future could wreck it. The truest thing I can say about me is that I’ve got this reckless need to live free and alone. And Joe, in his own way, does too.

WHEN I CAME HOME from cleaning houses the other day, the kids were out by the apple tree, winging fallen apples around. I watched them as I unloaded my cleaning supplies: the bucket of rags, the bottles full of chemicals, the vacuum. I’d cleaned three houses in record speed. It’s amazing the sort of energy that love can give you. I went inside and wrote myself a note to buy a new can of wd-40, because it’s the best for taking off sticky residue. I flopped on the couch and tamped some pot into my beautiful green pipe but didn’t light it.

Though I’d been happy all day, now I was sad: extremely sad, even tearful. Perhaps I’d been feeling too happy lately, and the pendulum in my body was swinging back. Or maybe I was getting my period; it’s hard to tell because they’re irregular these days. Or maybe it was because Joe was in Denver at a horseshoeing convention, and even though we had put no restrictions on each other, I was afraid he might be attracted to someone else — a smart, beautiful veterinarian perhaps. Or maybe it was simply that I knew I wouldn’t see his truck winding up the drive anytime soon. On top of that, the sound of Winnie’s kids yelling outside reminded me that it was too late for me now — I was never going to have any children — and the fact that I didn’t really want any didn’t alleviate my sorrow much.

Being lonely is not necessarily bad. In fact, sometimes I think the good feeling I get from being with Joe is possible only because of the basic human condition of being lonely. Plus, learning to live alone is an excellent way of staying grounded and safe and avoiding the jerks of the world. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten better at being alone. And loneliness is good because it gives you time to consider other people’s lives. I can, for example, consider Winnie and her particular brand of loneliness and wonder if marriage doesn’t create more loneliness than it wards off. I wonder if the institution of marriage will evolve as humans evolve, and I wish I could be around to see it.

I was thinking now about the future for Joe and me. I tried to stop myself, but I couldn’t resist going over the possibilities. Of course our relationship would end at some point in time, the way most relationships end, which is to say one or both persons drift off. It takes too much energy — too much bravery, really — to say goodbye, so usually there’s just a silent withdrawal, hardly perceptible until it becomes obvious. You quit being so generous with yourself. Joe will quit going out of his way to stop by, and I won’t go out of my way to rearrange my cleaning schedule. And strangely enough, this lack of giving will make us feel trapped, and we will want our freedom again. Then we’ll offer each other a tired, sad smile, because somewhere inside we’ll know it’s over — or at least that the most alive part is over.

Because I read a lot — I wonder, rather egotistically, whether I read more than anyone else on this mountain — I know who the Roman poet Ovid is, and one beautiful thing he wrote is “If you seek a way out of love, be busy; you’ll be safe then.” So I sat on the couch and lectured myself: Do not do that. Do not get busy. Instead, I decided, when Joe and I were through, I would sit around and smoke pot and let the great wilderness of the inner life take over, as it should.

Because it was a gloomy day, I knew Winnie would be making brownies — chocolate helps her get through the gloom — and I knew she’d bring me some, because she’s not stingy, and something about that made me want to go and play with her kids. I stashed the pipe for later and went outside and found them under the apple tree. They were wearing puffy coats but no hats and gloves, and Zoe had a clear line of snot running from her nose to her lip. They were crouched down, staring at two grasshoppers, who were — no joke — having sex.

“Look, Gretchen!” Zoe smiled up at me. “These grasshoppers are wrestling!”

“Indeed they are,” I said.

“Just like we wrestle!” said the boy, whose name is Michael.

“Sort of,” I said.

“There’s a lot of bear poop under your apple tree,” Zoe said disapprovingly, as if I were responsible for it. “We poked at it with a stick. We think the bear ate ten million apples to have so much seed in its poop.”

“That seems about right,” I said. Then I said, “Are you two happy?”

They looked up at me, faces flushed, as if wondering whether I was stupid. Michael didn’t say anything, but Zoe said, “Yes.”

And that’s when we heard it. A huff, huff and then another huff, huff and then the smell hit me — a terrible smell, really — and I said, “Oh, kids,” about the same time that the bear appeared out of the raspberry bushes. I thought, Damn, this bear was supposed to come when Joe was here, but I said, very calmly, “Don’t worry, kids. It will go away,” and then I addressed the bear: “Bear, go away. Go away, bear.”

But it did not go away. It was walking on all fours toward the apple tree as if it had not seen us, although surely it had. It seemed very calm. Its fur was dark brown, darker in the head region, and its ears were round, and its nose curved upward just a bit. It took four more steps and then sat back on its butt, and I saw the row of nipples that ran down her belly.

Zoe let out a small noise of fear, and Michael was frozen in place, but I could tell he was about to scream or run, so I said, “Kids, don’t move. Do not move. Stay right next to me.” And then I shuffled them behind me. “Bear,” I said, “we are not going to hurt you, and you can have the apples. If you hurt us, I will hurt you back.”

The kids were starting to cry, and so was I, actually, although I think it had more to do with my previous sadness than with fear of this bear. The bear was making me miss Joe, and I kept telling myself, Jesus, Gretchen, don’t think about Joe now. Now is not the time. I said, more firmly and loudly, “Kids, I want you to know one thing. This bear will have to fight me before she gets to you. And let me tell you, I can put up a big fight.” Then I started talking to the kids about some cockamamie plan my brain was developing, something about us all backing up slow, and if she charged, they should turn and run. No, I would put them up in the tree and guard them. But no, that wasn’t a good idea, either. So I told Zoe and Michael that I could tell, with my grown-up knowledge, that the bear wasn’t going to attack, that she was a big sweetie. It was just ridiculous, the things I heard coming out of my mouth. While I was talking, the bear got bored and started walking in our direction, but a little to the right. All she wanted was the apple tree.

I looked around for sticks, but there weren’t any, only a few bruised and wormy apples scattered about, so I bent over slowly and picked up three at my feet. I guessed that I could throw pretty hard and had good aim, and no creature really wants to be pelted with apples, so I knew that the apples were going to save us, and then I felt calm and safe, which gave me enough time to pause and consider the bear. She was sitting and huffing again, as if trying to decide whether the apples were worth it. Her need for those apples was strong, though. I decided that I liked her, because she was stubborn and perhaps lived too hard. If I hadn’t had two kids behind me, grabbing so hard at my shirt that they were strangling me, I might have stood there and considered the bear for quite a while.

“All righty,” I whispered. “We’re going to back up now. Are you ready? If she comes, I’ll throw apples at her and punch her in the nose, and you two keep backing up, no matter what. OK?”

As we backed away, the bear lowered her head, and her nose twitched, and then she moved forward rapidly, right at us, and I heard myself say, “Oh God oh God oh God,” and my right arm cocked back with the apple, ready to pitch it at her face, and my other arm went back and low, to shield the kids, and then I said, very loud, “Bear, your egg is implanting and you’re going to have a baby and you will not hurt us!” Suddenly I was angry with her, and my face flushed, and I thought of the time an old boyfriend had struck me across the cheek, and my head had flown into the corner of an open car door, and the blood had run down through my hair and down my cheek, and then I thought of Joe and his hands running across my back and how when I had an orgasm with him my body began to shake, all wildness, and there was no story in my mind. My mouth opened on its own, and I made a wild noise, a noise that basically meant Get the hell away from me and these kids, and the bear stopped short.

AS I TOLD Joe a couple of days later, the bear held her ground and watched us go inside. The kids and I stood at my kitchen window and saw her climb up the apple tree, where she stayed for some time. “That’s one of the few times I’ve backed away from danger,” I told Joe. “I prefer, generally, to move forward. It’s safer that way.”

We were lying side by side, partly naked, under the apple tree, and it was starting to snow — tiny flakes that reminded me of campfire ash, perhaps because they reflected the gray of the sky. They were blowing sideways, and it was very cold out, and I kept pausing during my story and saying, “This is ridiculous,” and Joe kept saying, “It sure is,” but we didn’t move.

Joe had piled our coats and clothes on one side of us to make a wind barrier, and he used his body as another, but still I was freezing. I was also filled with nervous energy, maybe because I was thinking about the bear, or maybe because I had come to the point where I felt the need to unleash my words upon Joe. In any case, I talked for a long time. I told Joe that Winnie had hugged the kids and promised me a lifetime supply of brownies. I told Joe that Winnie’s marriage had gotten to that place where imagination and willpower fail, and that she and her husband were both feeling like they were each other’s prisoner. But probably at some point they’d stop feeling that way, and then it would get better. I told him we’d probably ramble through the same cycle ourselves, if we stuck it out. I told him that our lives seemed to be getting caught up together, and that from time to time I considered the beauty in that. I told him that I loved him, and that when we broke up, I would look back on this period as the “time of Joe,” and that I believed that a few good memories could sustain a person. I told him that I nearly cried with love for him every time I had an orgasm, because when the body loses its limitations, the heart does too. I told him he was the best lover I’d ever had, and that new things were happening to my body, that the violence was getting worked out. I told him that no matter what happened with us, he should know he had created a new and better version of me.

He held me to him and listened and hugged me tighter now and then. Sometimes he said a word or two to show agreement, or simply to acknowledge that he was listening, and then, when I had wound down, he told me that he saw no point in forecasting the end of us, although he understood the impulse, and that he too had recently wondered what there was to live for besides love. Our conversation went around and stopped and started and circled back, and I felt as if our bodies and our words were grapevines, and then I felt the foolishness of that, and then I let go of feeling foolish.

It was during a lapse into silence that we heard the fall of feet in new, wet snow. Joe and I raised our eyebrows at each other as if delighted to be caught, and then turned toward the noise. It was Winnie. She had a big brown blanket under one arm, and a silver thermos under the other, and in her hands she held a tinfoil-covered plate.

Joe pulled a shirt over his hip, so that he was covered, but I stayed were I was. When Winnie stood above us, she did not blush or look to the side, but smiled as if pleased with us and for us. She handed the thermos and covered dish to Joe, and then she flung out the blanket in the air, where it hovered for a moment before she guided it down on top of us.

“Joe,” she said, “it’s nice to meet you.”

He reached up to shake her hand. “Winnie, the pleasure is mine.”

“Have a brownie,” she said. Then, to me, “Gretchen, I’ll be over at five.” And she turned on her heel and started back across the snow.

“Joe,” I said, as I watched her go, “I want you to stay. Maybe that’s selfish. But I want to be with you. Once, I looked at you and thought, Here’s where gentle and wild get sewn together, and now I want to believe that most of life can be that way, if we let it.”

Joe scratched the gray curls at his temple and said, “I’m scared too.” He shrugged and smiled, as if that was all he could say, and that said everything.

I breathed out a long gust of air, and my teeth began to chatter. We pressed our bodies together under the blanket and drank Winnie’s coffee and ate her brownies and watched as the snow blew sideways. When we were done, I looked over at Joe. His eyelashes had melting flakes in them, and I stared at the drops and said, “This is ridiculous, Joe. It’s cold out here. This is the craziest kind of love story, I’ll tell you that.”

We got dressed then, and we ran for my trailer, our hands thrown out to the world.   

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