Raising Demons Read Online Free PDF Page B

inevitably blasted, abruptly, out from under us, and the slight Japanese accent which Sally retained from the experience lasted for several months.
    It was on a pleasant Sunday afternoon, when I was sitting reading a mystery story on our own front porch. Through the still air I could hear the distant enraged shouts of nine-year-old boys discussing reasonably the accuracy of a batted ball; Sally and Jannie, shiny from their morning swim, were playing in the sandbox; Barry had awakened, cheerful, from his nap and was singing to himself in the playpen, watching the sunlight, and holding aloft one small foot. My husband was around on the side porch, slowly relaxing into that heavy-eyed state which hits him about the seventh inning of the baseball broadcast, and which slips imperceptibly into a nap before dinner. I had just showered and changed into a clean skirt and blouse, and was in the process of deciding that it was really too hot to fry the chicken for dinner, and I would make instead some nice cool salad (tunafish?) when Laurie shot down the road on the bike we had borrowed for the summer, and came to a shrieking halt half an inch from the porch steps. “Got to get ready,” he said gaspingly, vaulting the porch rail. “Hurry.”
    â€œLaurie, it’s just too
hot
to race around like that. You’ll have sunstroke or something;
nothing
is important enough to—”
    â€œCompany,” Laurie said. “People coming over. Here.”
    I rose abruptly. “Company?”
    â€œGot to
hurry
, they’ll be here in a minute.” Laurie started through the door and I followed after him, saying, “Wait, who—”
    â€œGot to talking to them. Ball field. Said they’d be right over, we got to
hurry.
” He turned to the stairs. “Better put on a clean shirt,” he said.
    If Laurie intended, uncoerced, to put on a clean shirt, immediate and violent action of some kind was called for from me. I moved swiftly to the window which opened onto the side porch, said, “Company,” and heard my husband groan. I then passed through the house to the back door, from which I shouted, “Jannie, Sally,” and was rewarded by a distant answering voice. “Clean shirt,” I said thoughtfully, and went up the stairs two at a time and into the girls’ room where I found two nearly clean dresses, skidded into the boys’ room where Laurie was buttoning his best Hawaiian print shirt, snatched a sunsuit for Barry, called downstairs, “Porch chairs,” and stopped long enough to run a comb through my hair. “Who
are
these people?” I shouted to Laurie, and he shouted back from his room, “Visiting America. One’s named Yashamoto, I
think.
”
    Remotely I recalled rumors I had heard of a group of foreign students visiting our town for a brief vacation and orientation course in this country before going on to study in various colleges and universities all over the country. “How many are there?” I shouted across to Laurie, but he had gone downstairs. Serve them coffee, I thought frantically, or perhaps something typically American—hot dogs? No, no, not in the middle of a hot afternoon. Iced coffee; iced coffee, and there was a box of doughnuts in the breadbox if the children hadn’t gotten to it; cookies? I wish I had some ice cream, I thought; can’t serve company popsicles from the deep freeze, and I took the three bottom steps in one leap. I was plugging in the electric coffeepot when Jannie and Sally came through the back door; I threw their dresses at them and said, “Company, wash your faces.” They disappeared, murmuring, and I moved swiftly in to Barry, who was amused at the idea of wearing the sunsuit, since it was the first article of formal attire he had seen since summer’s start. I tied Sally’s sash, took a swipe at each head with the hairbrush, heard voices outside, emptied an ashtray on my