The Revelator

The folk­lorists knew the sto­ries — had heard them for decades, from ani­mal tamers, radio sta­tion man­agers, side­men, preach­ers, huck­sters — but had never writ­ten them down. Even among the real his­to­ries of musi­cians, the blind­nesses, the miss­ing limbs, the lives spent in mines dis­tilled into a five-note scale and a voice like a buz­z­saw, they seemed like too much. Yet the telling was so con­sis­tent. Twin broth­ers Earl and Orville Spleen, every­one said, were born on a road­side in 1908, the mother lean­ing against the side of a truck and drop­ping her kids together into the sand. Twenty-nine years later, they were found dead in the back of a wide car out­side a farm at the end of a long, jagged road spiked with unstrung fen­ce­posts. Earl stretched across the back seat, Orville across the footwell. All their instru­ments in the trunk. They’d seen their par­ents burn in a house fire when they were chil­dren, were home­less from then on. Trav­eled with revival tents, cir­cuses, med­i­cine shows, from Texas to North Car­olina, fol­low­ing the strands of county high­ways across the rural South. Filled the ears of the Del­mores with their music, the Anglins, the Bol­icks, the Mon­roes, who walked away in a stu­por, as if still sleep­ing, still held by dreams that did not set­tle them. I thought I knew a lit­tle about the gui­tar when I was younger, Alton Del­more said once, but then I heard them pick it and knew I didn’t know a thing.

They could both play fid­dle, gui­tar, banjo, man­dolin. Sang in high, eerie tenors, ris­ing and falling together, cross­ing, as only broth­ers’ voices can. Could do blues, gospel, hymns as sweet as any in church. Even rags, a lit­tle jazz. What­ever peo­ple wanted to hear. But when they played for them­selves, they did fid­dle tunes they must have writ­ten. Evil lit­tle things, Clay­ton McMichen said once. I couldn’t play a sin­gle one of them. Can’t for­get them, either, though. Wish I could. They were like Death com­ing through the key­hole. Music to slaugh­ter ani­mals by. A phar­ma­cist who said he saw them in 1932 told the folk­lorists how a woman mis­car­ried while hear­ing them, and that night, it rained dead crows; when he was diag­nosed with para­noid schiz­o­phre­nia in 1964, he blamed it on Earl and Orville Spleen. I could feel them tak­ing my brain apart even then, he said.

They’re like your boogey­men, the folk­lorists said to a choir of shape-note singers, who told them how the Spleens had joined them for one after­noon, left them all bet­ter than when they started. Bet­ter and hum­bled, a lit­tle afraid.

No, said the choir direc­tor. They’re yours.

Some of the folk­lorists thought they were being fed a line. They just want us to leave, they’re hop­ing we’ll bite and go chase them, they said. As if the Spleen Broth­ers were the biggest fish, big­ger than Son House, big­ger than Skip James. But for so long, there were only the sto­ries, and no way to make the his­tor­i­cal record match them. Oh, some of the folk­lorists tried. Tried to find the Spleens’ kin, birth cer­tifi­cates, records of house fires. Any­thing. Found noth­ing. See? the skep­tics said. They don’t exist.

How do you know? said a mechanic.

Nobody gets born with­out some­one know­ing about it. It’s the way this country’s run, the folk­lorists said. And the mechanic who heard them say this just smiled, shook his head. Com­ing down here, talk­ing like that, he thought to him­self. You have no idea how this country’s run.

And then there was the story about the folk­lorists them­selves, how one of them had tried to cap­ture the sound of Earl and Orville Spleen. Knew they were work­ing with the C.C. Can­de­labra Cir­cus then, were some­where in Alabama. Liked to set them­selves down on two stools, knee to knee, among the ani­mals after they’d gone to sleep, close their eyes, and play until dawn. The story went that it took the man a week of dri­ving around the state, ask­ing after a cir­cus, until he found them at last on a fair­ground in Marengo County. Drove up while they were just sit­ting down. Waited for hours while they fell into a trance, then turned on his machine. He only got a minute into it before they woke up, destroyed the record­ing equip­ment, set the car on fire. The folk­lorist woke up in a vet’s office the next morn­ing, splints on both his legs and his right arm. The smell of horse all around. They beat you pretty good, the vet said. You’re lucky the noise woke up their boss. Accord­ing to him, they would have killed you, except the boss said he’d fire them if they did.

I should go back there and thank him, the folk­lorist said.

No, you shouldn’t, the vet said.

That never hap­pened, the other folk­lorists said. If it did, we’d know about it. Wouldn’t the researcher have said something?

Maybe not, a truck dri­ver said. You never know what peo­ple won’t tell you.

Then the record­ing was found, in a fil­ing cab­i­net sal­vaged from the 2010 flood in Alcorn County, Mis­sis­sippi. It had come down from Ten­nessee, a sin­gle pressed 78, unla­beled. The owner hadn’t even known it was there. The folk­lorists sent it around among them­selves. A queer thing. Not a tune any of them rec­og­nized, a tonal­ity that didn’t seem South­ern. The banjo too loud to dis­cern the true notes. The style too mod­ern to be from the 1920s or even the 1930s, they said. And why had some­one made a 78 of it? An unspo­ken agree­ment among them to talk about every­thing but the last few sec­onds, the sounds of vio­lence. It’s a fraud, the skep­tics said. Some­one try­ing to make us believe. They said it with such con­vic­tion in the day­time. But at night, dri­ving on the inter­state, they could not get the bru­tal­ity out of their heads. Won­dered just how much was still hid­ing from them. Wait­ing for them to get home.

{Lis­ten to the Spleen Broth­ers 78}