Monument Road

by Michael Wiley

  When I asked about French horns, the counterwoman took me down a step into an attached room, opened a disintegrating vinyl case, and removed a brass instrument. ‘This came in four weeks ago. We refurbished it. It makes a lovely sound.’

  She offered it to me, but, moved by an impulse I didn’t understand, I stepped away.

  She smiled. ‘Wouldn’t you like to try it? We have practice rooms in the back.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘Come, see how it sounds.’ She carried the horn into the main room and took me back through a hallway that led to three closed doors. She tapped on the first and, when no one answered, opened it. She handed me the horn and said, ‘Take your time. I’ll be in front when you’re done.’

  Behind the closed door, I turned the French horn in my hands. It felt heavy – heavier than I remembered my grandfather’s horn being when I was a child. I polished the bell with the bottom of my shirt, then polished the bell pipe and the slides. I looked at my reflection in the brass. A fun-house mirror. I looked at the mouthpiece. There was something as fearsome as teeth about it.

  I raised it to my lips.

  What incomprehensible sounds?

  I pulled the horn away, touched my tongue to my lips, and brought the mouthpiece back up.

  What kiss?

  What breath of life?

  I played a note. The first note of the Star Wars theme song ‘Across the Stars.’ The horn gleamed and blurred in the tears that ran from my eyes. I held the mouthpiece to my lips and played another note.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I owe much of my understanding of Franky Dast’s circumstances to the large and growing literature on death row exonerations. Especially important have been Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, Pete Earley’s Circumstantial Evidence: Death, Life, and Justice in a Southern Town, and Lola Vollen and Dave Eggers’ Surviving Justice: America’s Wrongly Convicted and Exonerated, which includes a story told by death row exoneree Juan Melendez that inspired the death scene involving Frank’s friend Stuart.

  My deep thanks to Julia Burns, Philip Spitzer, Lukas Ortiz and all at Severn House. My love to Julie, Isaac, Maya, and Elias.