The Fox Sisters

Maggie’s father, John Fox, summed it up: “A houseful of women is like a sack of cats.”

Mother Ann didn’t like it any better and she was relieved when they got rid of Leah. Her stepdaughter provoked her, sneaky and deliberate. That superior smile of hers held not a drop of Christian joy, so when she married that slack-jawed farmhand, Mother Ann stood up in church and simpered right back at her, thinking, “I hope he beats her.”

Maggie, the middle sister, aged eleven, liked Leah. She often had to watch Maggie and her younger sister Kate, but she never complained about tending her little sisters. No, she held their faces, round as apples, cradled in her two hands, her brown eyes so like theirs, and said, “You’re mine.”

It was true, Maggie and Kate would do anything Leah asked, even if it got them in trouble. She still laughed when she thought of the time that they set the pigs free. When she was little, Maggie had been frightened of pigs—she hated the way their mean little eyes always seemed to be sizing her up—but Leah had dared her to slip the rope over the fence post and she had done it, barricading herself behind the gate as they burst out of the pen. Lordy, she had no idea pigs could run so fast! It took John Fox and his men all day to get them back in, and this was during harvest, when they had scarcely ten minutes to spare.

Oh, he was mad all right, and the house seemed small from the shouting. The neighbors could hear them from across the road and Mrs. Dietrich dropped her sewing in her lap and said to her husband, “It’s just not a happy house.”

“Never was,” he replied, and he didn’t have to tell his wife that he was thinking of their former neighbor, old Sam Kincaid, and the sudden way he had run off. Middle of the night, never seen again, and they didn’t even have a story to show for it. It was better to have a story, you can see where folks turned wrong, just like in the Bible.

Now Leah was back. All unannounced, her farmhand drove his wagon back to the Foxes and dumped her trunk in the dirt, looking like he had a mind to drop Leah if he could. “I can’t do a thing with her, Mr. Fox. Heart like a damn stone, that one.”

He flicked his whip over his mule’s back with soothfast anger and left the Fox family alone after that. Leah wasn’t mad, it was never her doing the shouting. Other people got terribly angry with her, but she never reacted. She just stood there with that cold smile and let them tire themselves out.

There was one thing the farmhand managed to do with Leah. She started to show at the end of winter and Mother Ann could not contain her bitterness. “John Fox, you need to saddle up and go talk to that fool. He’s got a baby on the way, and he has to take her back.”

“He doesn’t want her back and she doesn’t want to go. What am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t care what they want! They are a family, whether they like it or not. There are laws for this sort of thing.”

“Oh, Ann, I’m so tired.”

“You think you’re tired now, John Fox? How do you suppose you’ll feel when we still have Leah, plus our own two girls, and a baby howling all night? Let me be clear: I am not raising that baby. I won’t have it.”

Leah and Maggie and Kate lay on the bare wood floor of the girls’ bedroom and listened to Mother Ann’s barrage.

“Are you going to have a baby?” Kate whispered.

“Yes,” Leah smiled and gently touched the end of Kate’s freckled nose. Just ten, the baby, Kate was still child-like most of the time. “And I hope it’s a girl.”

“Mother is so angry,” Maggie said.

“She’s been very unkind. And I’m in such a delicate condition.”

The girls nodded, taken in by Leah’s lowered eyelashes and quavering voice. But then the old, sharp Leah came back, the one with a gleam in her eye, the one they knew best.

“Would you like to help me get back at her?”

The next day, the girls went on a picnic, even though it was only March and there was still snow on the ground. Leah packed them sandwiches and stole some cakes Mother Ann had made for the church supper. It seemed to Maggie and Kate that they walked for an awfully long time, tramping deep into the woods until they reached a broad stump. Leah swept the snow off with one mittened hand and the girls sat down. She drew a buttonhook out of her pocket, slender metal gleaming in the sun like the blade of a knife.

“Take off your shoes,” she said and they did, taking off their mittens to finagle the tiny side buttons. Maggie and Kate had such trust in Leah, they didn’t even ask why.

“And your stockings.” Thick wool stockings that Leah and Mother Ann had knitted themselves, stuffed into the pockets of their winter coats, dangling over the top like the tails of hidden animals.

Nothing looks more naked than an exposed foot, white skin turning red from the cold. There were four girls’ feet dangling over the edge of the stump, their toenails grown long over the winter and not exactly clean. Then there were six as Leah joined them. She didn’t seem to feel the cold and put her bare feet in the snow like she did it every day.

“Now,” she said with a wicked smile. “Can you do this?”

Crack! It sounded like a gun had been fired. The little girls shrieked and then giggled when they realized they weren’t hurt. Crack! There it was again, and Kate fell into the snow, she was so surprised.

“Leah, how are you doing that?”

“Watch,” she said, and pointed at her toes. Maggie caught it this time. The fourth toe on her left foot twitched ever so slightly, and crack! Then she waggled all her toes, and it sounded like fireworks on the Fourth of July. The girls laughed and laughed, the last time they were all so happy at once ever again.

“Leah, will you teach me?” Kate’s voice was shrill with excitement.

“I’ll teach both of you. Now watch, and do what I do.” Crack! Crows flew away from the trees. Maggie and Kate tried and tried but couldn’t make a sound.

“I’m getting cold,” Maggie complained.

Leah lost her temper. “You cannot put your stockings back on until you’ve learned to crack. Try again!”

“I’m hungry,” Kate whimpered.

Leah grabbed Kate’s little foot and wrestled her toes until they made a small sound, more like a crunch or a croak than a crack. “You’ll eat when you’ve learned.”

It took hours, until the sun was setting behind the bare trees and the girls were sore from shivering. Kate got it first, surprising herself with success. “Oh! It’s easy,” and she smiled and did it again.

Leah stood over them both with her arms crossed over her chest to keep warm. “Maggie, how about you?”

“I can’t. I’m too cold.”

Leah’s mouth was a thin, angry line. “You’d better not tell Mother Ann.”

“I won’t!”

“You’d better not, that’s all. Swear!”

“I swear!”

Finally, a definite crack and when Maggie proved she could do it twice, Leah was all smiles again. “Now here’s what we’re going to do,” she said, her voice a hot whisper in their ears, a hand on each of their shoulders, drawn close even though there was no one else around for miles. That’s how it is with secrets, the real ones that you don’t just want to keep, but need to hold close with never a word. Leah laid out her bold plans.

That night, Mother Ann and John Fox sat in the parlor after the girls went to bed. Mother Ann had her Bible open to the Book of Ruth, and John Fox dozed over his Farmer’s Almanac.

“I don’t know why Leah had to keep them out so late,” Mother Ann said. “Maggie and Kate were ready to drop when they finally got home. Hungry and cold, downright bedraggled, with never a word about where they had been all day.”

She looked up at the ceiling as if she could see through the wooden floor to the bedroom, pierce her girls’ hearts, and lay bare their secrets.

“It would seem to me that letting out her dresses might be a better use of Leah’s time. I won’t buy her any new and the ones she has are tight already.”

She glanced over at John Fox, waiting for him to confirm what she had just decreed: Leah was not to receive anything new, despite the baby. No dowry, no hope chest, not for a woman who was already married and ought to be home with her husband.

“No, Mother. You know best.” He did not look up from his page. It was looking like a wet spring.

Mother Ann’s first wish was that Leah would marry again and move far away, California, maybe, or England. That girl would have to learn gratitude and humility for any man who would have her, unlucky slut that she was. Until that happy day, Mother Ann could work Leah into the ground. The little cow would have to do as she was told, for where else could she go? There wasn’t a single corner of God’s green earth that would welcome a young woman with a baby, but no husband and no money. Mother Ann was an upstanding Christian, her voice the strongest—if not the prettiest, or strictly speaking, the most musical—in her church choir, but she enjoyed having the whip hand over her wayward stepdaughter. The possibilities for instruction were endless.

Thump and rumble from the girls’ bedroom. Mother Ann listened for the sounds of their pattering feet, all the louder for trying to be quiet. There was nothing and Mother Ann closed her eyes, thinking about bed herself.

Thump! There it was again, so loud even John Fox started at the sound. “Sounds like they dropped their ball,” he said sleepily.

“They don’t own a ball,” Mother Ann snapped. The girls had very few toys, just a doll and a primer each.

It happened again, directly over Mother Ann\'s head and she stood up as if summoned to testify. “I will put a stop to this.”

She lifted her skirts with one hand and held up a lantern with her other. She climbed the stairs as infrequently as she could. What was the purpose of having daughters if not to have them fetch and carry? She was panting by the time she opened the girls’ door.

“What\'s all that noise?\"

The girls were sitting up in the bed they shared. They had their arms around each other and blinked in the sudden light.

Mother Ann swept the lantern around the room, looking for the ball they must have dropped. But there was nothing, no heavy, round object that could have made that noise.

“Well?”

“Nothing,” Maggie said stubbornly. “Nothing happened.”

“Don’t you lie to me, little girl. Don\'t you do it.” She bent suddenly and looked under the bed, but there was nothing there, not even dust. “Tell me what made that racket.”

Maggie burst into tears. “I don\'’ know! I heard it, but I don\'t know what it was!”

“Kate, what do you have to say for yourself?”

Little Kate blinked sleepily. “How should I know? I was asleep.”

Mother Ann glanced at the bed in the corner where Leah slept. Slept like the dead, that girl, she thought disapprovingly, forgetting how tired she had been during her own pregnancies, barely able to keep her eyes open once the sun went down.

Crack! Mother Ann shrieked, “What was that? John, you need to get up here!”

From below, the girls could hear a deep sigh as their tired father hoisted himself out of his chair and mounted the stairs with a heavy tread. He was practically never in this room; Mother Ann tended to the girls. He was struck by the smell, the slightly sour and yeasty scent of a room full of sleeping girls.

Leah sat up and smiled. “What\'s the matter?”

“You tell me, you little minx! What mischief are you getting up to in here?”

Leah rolled her eyes, unable even to summon a scrap of respect for the woman who shared her home and her table. “I didn’t hear anything, Mother Ann, truly.”

Crack, crack, crack! Like river ice breaking up in a spring thaw.

Mother Ann dragged the little girls out of bed. “Get downstairs, girls! There’s something going on here and I don’t like it one bit.”

She hurried down the stairs clumsily, one of the girls’ arms in each strong hand. “John Fox! I don’t know what you’re waiting for, go get help!”

Leah made her own way downstairs, first taking the time to relish eating the apple young Maggie had rolled across the floor to her. She would remember the smell of it all her long life.

When John Fox returned, both the Dietrichs from the neighboring farm were with him. Mrs. Dietrich had wrapped a large shawl over her nightdress and Maggie could see her bare legs underneath, lardy white skin, goose-pimpled with the cold. Mr. Dietrich had sloppily tucked his night shirt into his pants and his hair stuck up on one side. Kate and Maggie smiled to see them in such disarray, so frightened.

Mrs. Dietrich rushed over to Mother Ann and hugged her. “Ann, what is going on over here?”

“I hardly know,” Mother Ann said. “There have been strange sounds all night.”

“Well, I don’t hear anything.” Mr. Dietrich already looked a little put out to have been dragged from his bed.

They all fell silent, four adults, two children, and Leah, somewhere in between. They looked upward, as if praying, waiting for the next sound. When it didn’t come, they relaxed slowly, bit by bit.

At last, John Fox said, “You must think we’re the biggest fools in the whole town.”

“Now, now,” said Mr. Dietrich as he and his wife headed for the door.

“We know how things are over here,” Mrs. Dietrich said with a kind smile.

Maggie knew exactly what she meant. How things are was a houseful of angry women and a baby on the way, a time when anything at all might happen. She waited until Mr. Dietrich’s hand was on the door latch and then—crack! Crack, crack, crack! Maggie knew her sisters had joined her, their bare feet neatly curled under them, toes twitching all unseen.

Mother Ann moaned and Mrs. Dietrich cried, “What in the world was that?”

The sounds weren’t coming from the bedroom anymore. Whatever had made that uncanny racket was in the room among them. John Fox grabbed the oil lamp and recklessly swung it around the room, searching every corner but finding nothing, nothing at all.

Mr. Dietrich stood in the center of the room and shouted, “Sam! Sam Kincaid! Is that you?”

One large crack, the source still impossible to discern.

Mrs. Dietrich clasped her hands together. “Oh, my Lord, it must be him. An angry spirit!”

Leah coolly took control. She called out, “Crack once for yes, twice for no. Are you Sam Kincaid?”

One crack.

“Are you dead?”

One crack.

“Were you murdered?”

“Oh, Leah,” Mother Ann said. “What are you doing?”

Another crack, sounding particularly close.

“Leah, stop!” Kate was terrified and clung to Maggie.

Leah did not stop. “Is your body still in the house?”

Crack!

“Well, that’s that,” John Fox said. “Tomorrow morning, we get some more men and search the place from top to bottom.”

They found the bones in the basement. Not many bones, but enough to raise some questions and identifiably human. There was also a silver button, winking back at them from the cellar dirt, dark, like the opposite of a star. Sam Kincaid was known to wear a jacket with buttons like that.

“But Leah,” Kate puzzled, her young face sprouting the worry lines of a much older girl. “How did you know about Sam?”

Leah leaned down—an action that grew more difficult by the day as her pregnancy progressed—and whispered in her ear, right under one of her braids, “I didn’t. People see what they want to see. We can use that.”

“For what?”

“You’ll see.”

Leah didn’t claim she had any special powers, but she didn’t deny them either. She just sat back and let the story grow and twist as it would, and pretty soon, people came to her, by ones and twos, always at night, always desperate. For a fee, Leah would sit with them, pray with them, and sometimes, a message would come through, clacking and crackling through the air like electricity.

“Johnny is safe now,” she told a grieving mother whose son had gone off to fight in Virginia. “He’s not in pain anymore, and he loves you very much.”

“Check the barn,” she told a widow. “William hid some money there. How much?” Crack! Crack! Crack! “Three hundred dollars.”

“It’s the war,” John Fox said. “A lot of men and boys, missing or dead. That or the telegraph.” Samuel Morse’s amazing invention allowed messages to travel through the air with taps and crackles. There was a context for Leah’s craft.

Her fees grew, as did the line of people coming up to the farm. Mother Ann was disgruntled. This wasn’t how she imagined things working out at all. “How much money have you made now, Leah?”

Leah demurred. She hid it where Mother Ann couldn’t find it.

“And not a penny for the household. Ungrateful, that’s what I call it.”

“It’s for the baby,” Leah said, stroking her broad belly. “Someone must provide for her.”

“Go!” Mother Ann demanded and pointed at the door. “I don’t know if you’re a witch or a fraud, but you will not stay in this house one more minute.”

Leah went, but she took her sisters with her.

Leah did not slink away into the shame and ignominy of a woman alone and pregnant. She did not starve in the street like a decent person would do. The Fox sisters rented the biggest house they could find, and their parlor was open every night, providing comfort to the afflicted. They made money, goodness yes, how it rolled in.

The baby came at the end of summer, heat lightening and hail, cold rain blowing out of the sky, as if summer itself was a lie, a trick, a ruse you were silly enough to fall for.

Maggie and Kate were terrified and had no idea what to do for a woman in labor. They had grown up quite a bit in their months with Leah and learned all kinds of things, but this was beyond them.

“Is it supposed to be this bad?” Kate whispered loudly. “This doesn’t seem right.”

Leah lay in her bed and howled like an animal.

“I’m going to get the doctor,” Maggie said, and left the house with the wind blowing so fiercely, it was hard to keep the lantern lit. “Stay with her.”

Maggie was surprised to discover that every door in their little town was closed to her, including the doctor’s. She pounded and shouted until she grew hoarse, her hair wet and loose, lashing her face. She didn’t know if they couldn’t hear her over the storm, or if they wouldn’t hear her. The sisters’ uncanny work might have curdled their neighbors’ Christianity, right when they needed it most. Having no choice, she went home, to her real home, to Mother Ann.

“It’s Leah,” she said when the door opened. “Will you come?”

Mother Ann was already dressed. She had been sitting in the dark kitchen with a full basket of supplies, as if she knew, as if she had feelings of her own. For once, she had nothing to say about the girls and simply stood up.

“Let’s go,” she said and walked into the night as if the storm didn’t exist at all. When they got to Leah’s room, she was barely conscious. Kate was backed in a corner, wringing her hands while tears poured down her face. “I didn’t know what to do,” she cried.

“I know what to do,” Mother Ann said. “Kate, get some more light in here. Maggie, fetch some water.”

Then she pulled back the sheet, wet and red and heavy, like the mainsail of a pirate ship. No quarter given.

Kate retreated to her corner and shut her eyes after she lit the lamps, but Maggie was a middle child and she saw everything. She saw the baby when Mother Ann pulled her free, blue and cold as a sapphire, birth cord tight around her neck. She saw how Leah’s entire body went limp, even though the blood kept coming and coming. It was nearly dawn.

“Is she going to die?”

“The baby is stillborn,” Mother Ann said. “It’s a shame, but there it is. I’ll get the doctor over here to stitch her up. Leah will live, I’m sure. The wicked ones always do.”

“The doctor wouldn’t answer the door when I went for him.”

“He’ll come for me, or I’ll know the reason why. Stay with her until I get back.”

Mother Ann bundled up the tiny baby and gently placed her in the basket she had brought with her. Tentatively, Maggie approached Leah’s bedside. She was soaked in sweat and barely breathing. Maggie jumped when Leah lunged and grabbed Maggie’s hand.

“I must remember,” Leah whispered. “What it feels like. A dead person passed right through me. Now I know.”

“Leah, dear sister, you should rest. Please try to sleep.”

Instead, Leah opened her eyes and looked at Maggie, her will as strong as ever. “You and Kate have to open the parlor tonight.”

“We can’t do it without you!”

“You can and you will. There are spirits all around us. We can’t let them go. It will be a performance to remember.”

“I don’t like lying to people,” Kate said, having picked an inconvenient time to develop a backbone. They were in the kitchen of their fine new home, drinking tea with more sugar than Mother Ann would ever have allowed. The sisters knew they wouldn’t be disturbed, for even when she was well, Leah hated kitchen work. She preferred to ring a small silver bell and summon whatever she needed.

Maggie said, “Remember how Leah explained it? It isn’t lying, it’s theater. We put on a show and grieving people take comfort in it. We’re helping them.”

“We’re lying,” Kate insisted. “We fool people. We pretend to see things we don’t. We say we hear things, but it’s just the bones in our feet and wires hung from the ceiling.”

“And people feel better! There is nothing else for them, Kate. Their loved ones aren’t coming back. Grief must be shouldered every day, day after day. If they want to sit around our parlor table in the dark and listen to the draft in the chimney and pretend that they hear voices, what’s the harm?”

“As long as they pay for it. They pay to be tricked.”

“That’s right. And if we stopped, we would have to go home to Mother, and she can’t think of anything else to do with us but get us married. It’s not so far off as you think. Do you want a husband?”

Kate shook her head and shuddered. At age ten, she had seen too much, and that part of her life was over now, over before it began.

“We can support ourselves doing this, Kate. We can be free.”

“But I don’t like lying.”

“You have until this evening to get over it.”

Leah had learned things as she developed her skills. The parlor was full of hidden wonders—black silk threads that could open doors or topple a pile of books, mirrors and tripwires, gaffes and gimcracks and cheats—one had to be very careful where one stepped. Maggie felt very uncomfortable sitting in Leah’s chair, a grand thing at the head of the table, upholstered in dark purple velvet. She sat there early, running through all the cheats she could reach from there.

When night fell, Kate answered the doorbell. Leah had coached her on how to do this. She was supposed to cultivate an air of mystery. Stay silent and act like she knew something nobody else did. She could do it with strangers, but when she saw Mrs. Dietrich standing on the doorstep, the same homely face she saw every day of her childhood, it all fell apart, and she sank into Mrs. Dietrich’s arms. She felt it before she saw it, no calico farm dress, but stiff black satin.

“It’s Tom,” Mrs. Dietrich said, referring to her husband. “He passed. Mule kicked him, he was dead before he hit the ground. Like they say, we know not the hour.”

“Oh, no.”

“I know you girls have…well, something. Didn’t I see it myself? I thought maybe you might help me. He went so fast, you see.”

Kate led her into the parlor and had her sit at the big round table, across from Maggie, who wore Leah’s black dress. It was big on her and she had to roll up the sleeves. Mrs. Dietrich put some bills in the middle of the table.

“Oh, no!” said Kate. “We won’t take your money.”

Maggie stood up and took the money herself. “We must. The spirits honor the transaction.” And Leah would be so angry if they didn’t, Maggie didn’t have to say it.

“Where is Leah?” That was Maggie’s first sign of trouble. Their thoughts were mingling so easily.

“She’s not feeling well,” Maggie said, and Kate remembered how many times they had called on their neighbors to be told a version of the same thing. Was it always this bad? It must be.

“What do we do?” Mrs. Dietrich’s plain face looked so innocent.

“We hold hands,” Maggie said, and the three of them stretched out their arms to clasp hands.

“Thomas Dietrich!” Maggie shouted, as she had seen Leah do. “We summon you!”

With one foot, Kate tripped the wire that threw open a shutter, the movement of which blew out the candle in the middle of the table.

“Oh, my!” Mrs. Dietrich’s face was pale as the moon.

“Thomas, are you with us? Show yourself.” This was where Maggie should have caused a mirror to fall off the wall, but it wasn’t working. The string must be snagged somewhere.

Maggie played for time. “Spirit, we’re waiting!”

Mrs. Dietrich saw it first, a white figure materializing silently behind Maggie, and screamed at the top of her lungs. Kate screamed too, and then she realized it was Leah, having wandered downstairs from her sick bed. How had she done it? She looked terrible, sweaty and ill.

“This isn’t right!” Mrs. Dietrich cried. “My Tom would never try to frighten me like this.” She threw open the parlor door with the strength that they all remembered, birthing cows, hoisting iron cooking pots, always carrying a child on one broad hip, caring for people.

Leah laughed and Maggie was sure she could see Leah’s skull behind her face. She sat in Mrs. Dietrich’s place, held out her white hands and said, “Let’s see who else is here with us.”

Neither Maggie nor Kate wanted to see anyone else, but they couldn’t refuse her. Despite her recent trials, Leah was lean and strong as a rope, dragging them along with her.

“Spirit! Come to me!”

The room was filled with a dreadful, angry clanging.

“What is that?” Maggie knew this was not one of Leah’s many tricks.

“I don’t know,” Leah said. “How interesting.” She would not let go her sisters’ hands. “Clankety clank, what could it be? Oh, I know. It sounds like junk in a peddler’s sack. Sam Kincaid, is that you?”

Kate started to cry. Maggie saw it, if no one else did, a dark figure in the corner, barely discernible from the shadows. Was it a man in a hat with a sack on his back? She knew it was.

Leah was undaunted. “We want money, Sam Kincaid. We found you, made sure you got buried proper. Now tell us how we get it.”

The room fell silent and Leah shivered, hardly dressed at all in her flimsy nightgown. It had grown cold, but Leah glowed like a woman in a fever. She closed her eyes and tipped her head back. Maggie saw the figure approach Leah, saw the shadows pass over her sister’s face and chest. They passed and they were gone. Neither Kate nor Maggie were involved in the transaction, although they would pay for it for the rest of their lives. They would serve Leah as long as she would have them, never knowing what was real and what wasn’t.

About the Author

Colleen Quinn grew up in upstate New York and was educated at Syracuse University. She works in advertising and has published over a dozen short stories in publications produced by Owl Hollow Press and New Lit Salon Press, among others. These stories may be found on her website: www.colleenquinn.com. She lives in Brooklyn with her family, where she continues to write short fiction and is currently at work on her first suspense novel.