Page 30 of Untouchable

4

The drivedown from Storm Mountain would be more beautiful if it wasn't always woven together with the anxiety Harp felt about visiting town. As he descends from his habitual 9,297 foot elevation, the Rockies loom like the hard dread filling his chest.

Most of the 45-minute trip from his home to Mink Creek, the closest real town, is uneventful. Someone in a bigger, newer truck than Harp's gets tired of his driving the speed limit and passes him, swerving into the other lane to take a wide arc around him. It makes Harp's spine tingle and he shivers.

Parker had called him about lunch, as Harp had asked, but shockingly it wasn’t to cancel. He’d left a meandering voicemail about a chiropractor he wanted Harp to see. The voicemail had caught him at a particularly optimistic time of day and he’d found himself dialing up the office, asking for an appointment with the recommended practitioner on the day Parker suggested.

They’d ended up playing phone tag through Mindy, the woman at the front desk who apparently does all the scheduling, never actually talking to each other but making plans nonetheless.

Harp had expected Parker to call and cancel up until the very last minute before he left. He still wouldn’t be surprised to find Parker backing out of their plans as Harp arrives.

He shouldn't have said yes to coming into town for a chiropractic appointment, and he definitely shouldn't have said yes to lunch with Parker beforehand—but at least all he has to do is find the Rocky Mountain Bodywork Center building again. He left a message with Mindy asking Parker to meet him there before they walk to whatever sandwich place it is the kid wants to go to.

The more cars he sees on the road, the more convinced he is that he's going to do something wrong—drive into oncoming traffic, miss his turn, sit dumb and deaf in front of a green light. People, cars, buildings all come faster and denser as he reaches the main strip of the little town.

Finally, he turns into the mercifully empty parking lot. Parker is already waiting for him outside the front door of Rocky Mountain.

* * *

Parker can’t helpthe wide smile that spreads across his face when he sees Harp’s truck pull into the little parking lot in front of the office. Parker’s wearing a zip up hoodie, the office logo stamped across the back—over his scrubs, his hands shoved in the pockets to ward off the October chill, but he waves as Harp gets out of the truck. Harp looks around the parking lot distrustfully, as though he’s waiting for some large bird of prey to swoop down and snatch him. His limp is still there, but it’s nowhere near as bad as it was before.

“I wasn’t sure you were gonna actually show up,” Parker says. It’s hard to resist the urge to throw his arms around Harp and pull him into a bone-crushing hug. He is pretty sure Harp would deck him if Parker tried, but there’s something about the crisp chill, the supersaturated colors of fall, and seeing the progress that Harp has made that makes Parker’s heart feel as bright and fizzy as champagne.

* * *

Harp has only beento Mink Creek once since he started the sessions with Parker, and that was on his monthly supply run in September. He's gotten those runs down to a science, and some months he gets by with just the single visit.

Those are the best months—the easy ones. They involve safe interactions at safe locations with safe people. They're predictable.

Rocky Mountain Bodywork Center is predictable. Harp has visited once before to sign up for his services with Parker. Harp has been inside the sanitized but vaguely luxurious space, a space that feels halfway between a spa and a doctor's office. He knows what to expect, how to get there, what the parking lot is like. Predictable.Safe.

Parker is predictable, to some extent, too. Yes, he's constantly surprising Harp—but he's certainly a safeperson.

During the year after his accident, when Harp had fought to purchase the parcel he lives on now from the county, Harp had made plenty of enemies at the Mink Creek City Hall. When they wouldn’t let him purchase the plot of land he wanted—even when he had cash in hand—Harp had driven into the city and shown up for each and every period of public comment, making himself a thorn in the city’s side in any way he could.

He’d quickly gotten a reputation for being a rude outsider, and it seemed like any local above the age of 40 had formed an opinion of him that year—none of them positive.

Harp got his way in the end, and when Harp is sitting on Storm Mountain, the people in town who hate him don’t matter much. They used to matter less, too, when he was coming to town more frequently.

Now that he’s only been coming once or twice a month for the past five years, Mink Creek looms like something unknown and intimidating. Now, when he shows his face in town, he is acutely aware of the enemies he’s made, of his reputation, and the fact that locals who don’t even know him hate him.

Harp shakes his head. He's a little dizzy as he crosses the parking lot. It's always strange to make the visual change from being in the same place, day after day, to being someplace open and populated with unexpected things. It's hard not to shut down, or get tunnel vision.

He approaches Parker, wary but feeling something like fondness in his chest. He’s probably the safest person I have in town, he realizes abruptly.

"So, where's this sandwich shop?" Harp asks by way of hello, rolling up the sleeves of his flannel in the sunshine.

* * *

“Just right over there,”Parker says, pointing down a few storefronts to The Salad Shack, the little cafe he and his co-workers frequent. He’s not quite in work mode, yet, and he allows himself to admire Harp’s forearms for a fraction of a second before glancing away. They’re nice forearms, he thinks—not that he hasn’t seen them before, not that he hasn’t touched them before, extensively, but it’s different like this, in the weak autumn sun, when things seem a little more vivid than they usually are.

Parker is practically skipping beside Harp as they head towards the cafe. He still can’t quite believe this is happening—he can’t quite believe he asked, and he definitely can’t believe Harp said yes. Parker knows he probably shouldn’t have invited Harp to lunch, but he’d felt so… not quite guilty, exactly, but some adjacent emotion, that he felt like he needed to give something to Harp in return after he’d taken so much—his food, his time, his generosity.

“I’m really glad you came,” he says. “I think Dr. Breen will really help, especially with the SI joint pain you’ve been having. And—and I’m glad you let me take you to lunch, too. I can’t promise it’s as good as the brisket you made, though, so you can’t hold that against me.”

"I never expect anything to be better than my own cooking,” Harp says, “but I'm also a human garbage can, so that works in your favor."

Parker laughs loudly, and the bright noise rings out across the sanitized little strip mall. It’s a nice area of town, and at this time of day, there’s not a ton of people around. He pushes open the door, and the cashier smiles at him, recognizing him—which is fair, seeing as he and Mindy come here at least twice a week.

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