Throughout the conversation, Mrs. Veedo's voice had grown louder and louder, so that when she asked, "What does it matter how much of it's true and how much of it isn't?" she was nearly shouting.

"It matters a lot," I said, simply being honest.

She paused to take a deep breath and count to five. Then she said, "I'm paying you to listen to him, Jimmy, not to grade him."

Of course, being a teacher, Mrs. Veedo knew all about grading. She was my honors world history teacher; her special emphasis being World War II, the Holocaust in particular. In class that day, we had worked up to the part of the story where Zhukov's Russians were driving toward Berlin. Now, at three in the afternoon, we were in the den of her house, arguing. She had hired me three weeks earlier to sit with her father in the afternoons and listen to his endless stories. His name was Phil Mendros (though I called him Grandpa to make him comfortable) and he was stuck in a 1970's Botswana village. His eighty-year-old ass was glued to the tacky sofa in his daughter's three-bedroom Orlando, Florida, home, but his mind was back in Africa. And there was a lot of other crazy stuff back there in Africa with him. Grandpa Mendros had a fairly fouled-up brain. One minute he'd be reminiscing about teaching Batswana tribesmen the cycles of the bovine epidemics north of the Sahara (though, according to the atlas, I believed he probably meant the Kalahari), then all of a sudden Fidel Castro would enter the picture, so that after the health lecture in the cattle posts, the two of them shared a friendly smoke at sundown, a couple of fine gentlemen relaxing beneath a bright orange sunset at the deserted railroad station of Palapye.

My mandate was to humor him. "You're a gifted student," Mrs. Veedo said, regaining her composure. "You and I both know Fidel Castro was never in Botswana with my father. But, for Pete's sake, play along. Do a little ooohing and aaahing."

Mr. Veedo, on the other hand, was much more realistic about the situation, though I admit it wasn't his father who'd spilled his whole sack of marbles. I was allowed to call Mr. Veedo Gabe as long as we weren't on campus. Gabe was the band teacher at Highland. He hummed military marches in the kitchen, where he slugged rum martini after rum martini and made faces behind his wife's back. "Joanna's dad was a specialist in what they call epizootics," he had once explained to me. "Epidemic diseases among animals. He traveled to Botswana on a U.S. Government grant to help the Batswana become more adept at feeding themselves. He lived there only two years, but, for some damned crazy reason, those two years are where his head is now. Perpetually." Then he'd asked me if I wanted a martini, and Mrs. Veedo, with the ears of a lioness, shrieked like a banshee from clear across the house. "Have you lost all sense?" she screamed. So it was back to the living room for me, where Grandpa Mendros was, naturally, in mid-sentence.

On the day after our argument, Grandpa Mendros retold the story of the arrival of Harry Beecher Stowe. "Botswana had recently become a U.N. member," he said, "so it was my personal privilege to meet U.N. Chief Executive Harry Beecher Stowe at a banquet in Gaborone. He was an absolutely splendid man." Grandpa Mendros nodded his head, eyes closed, marveling. "Close to seven feet tall, he was, with silver hair and a walrus mustache. And he was always immaculately groomed. Did you know that my team received a plaque and a standing ovation for our contribution to the republic?"

"No," I said. "Ooooh, aaaah!"

"Indeed. From the hand of Harry Beecher Stowe himself."

"Did you ever get a chance to show Mr. Castro your plaque?" I asked, playing the wise guy. He worked his jaw back and forth and blinked his eyes slowly. His head tilted in confusion. "Castro who?"

"Fidel Castro," I said. "What did he think of your plaque?"

He looked down at the carpet, deep in contemplation, then back up at me. "If I remember things correctly," he said, finally, slowly, "Fidel Castro was a Cuban. What the hell would he be doing in Africa?"

Lucidity was a word off the AP English vocabulary list, so I had the dictionary definition memorized: clearness of thought or style; a presumed capacity to perceive the truth directly and instantaneously. Sometimes you would hear people talk about "flashes" of lucidity, as if it was a kind of perception that you could possess one day but lose the next. Sort of like AP English vocabulary words. Some definitions you remember for life, others you forget five minutes after the quiz. There's usually no explaining the difference, and that's how it was with Grandpa Mendros; he'd reduced his whole life to an ancient vocabulary list. He would understand one afternoon that Fidel Castro was a Cuban, but the very next day he would be back to sharing a stogie with the guy on the edge of the Sahara, or the Kalahari, or wherever. I remember thinking that the definition of lucidity could be stretched to a definition of sanity, but after giving it some thought, I realized that they weren't necessarily equivalent. When Grandpa Mendros comprehended, that day, that Castro was Cuban, the reality had come to him sluggishly, as if the information were being telegraphed over miles and miles of grassy plains. When Castro returned to Africa, however, Grandpa Mendros's recollection--false as it was--was immediate and vivid. This was my conclusion: If lucidity was primarily a clarity of thought, Grandpa Mendros was most lucid when he was nuts.

Sometimes I would share the stories with my girlfriend, Cheryl, at Vittorio's, where once or twice a week we'd eat a pepperoni pizza and drink a pitcher or two of Mountain Dew. "Wednesday it was tsetse flies," I told her that weekend. "There's this huge swamp in the north of Botswana, called the Oinkyvanjo or something like that, and the tsetse flies there are as thick as mosquitoes in the Everglades. It's so bad that nobody can live there. A human being would be dead of sleeping sickness in less than a month."

I piled up my pizza crusts like stegosaurus bones on the edge of Cheryl's plate. Pizza crust was her favorite ethnic food. Sometimes we'd get a look from the waitress like we were being most uncouth, but we didn't give a flip. I tipped well for a teenager. Cheryl said, "That's why I don't believe in evolution."

"Why not?"

"Because the Botswana would've evolved an internal mechanism to overcome sleeping sickness."

"Batswana for the people, Botswana for the place."

"Whatever."

"That's a pretty stupid idea, anyway," I said.

"Why is that?"

"Because they might just as well have evolved legs so they could move away from the swamp. Which, if you think about it, is what they did. Essentially."

"Oh, that's brilliant," Cheryl said sarcastically, raising her hand to call for a second pitcher of Dew. "Is there a story that goes with this malaria-infested swamp?"

"Yeah, as a matter of fact there is. One day this herdsman comes running up to Mr. Mendros and his colleagues, all excited, with a dead tsetse fly cupped in his hands. He's shouting that he swatted it on a bull's ass. The first fly in three seasons. After the rains, if one tsetse fly shows up from the Okeebanjo, dozens more are sure to follow."

"Which wouldn't be a problem if they'd evolved an immunity."

"Who needs immunity when you have Americans with Raid? Mr. Mendros dips into his tent and hunts up half a dozen cans of Raid. All day, these African herdsmen are running around the cattle, hunting flies with magic mist."

Monday, while Mrs. Veedo was out shopping for a new mattress, Gabe asked again if I wanted a martini. I suggested that his father-in-law could use one more than I could, and Gabe's eyes lit up like he'd never before considered the possibility.

He strode into the living room, Bacardi bottle in hand. "Hey, Pop, you want a drink?" he asked. Grandpa Mendros halted his monologue and leaned far forward on the sofa. "What kind of drink?"

"Rum martini? Rum and Coke? Rum straight?"

The old man clapped his hands together. "I would fucking love a rum martini!" he exclaimed. I couldn't believe he'd used the f-word. I'd heard one hundred and one tales from those dried out lips, but I'd never heard the f-word. Then again, I'd never offered him a rum martini.

Half an hour and three very stiff drinks later, Grandpa Mendros had become a silly goat, telling us all about the time Sandro Botticelli had shown up on the 4:25 from Pretoria, South Africa, to paint a commissioned portrait of Grandpa Mendros's boss's wife.

"Ooooh," we gasped. "Aaaah."

"This Botticelli looked exactly like a teenaged J.F.K.," he said excitedly, "and the wives of my team-members immediately fell head over heels for him. 'Paint me!' one would demand. 'No, paint me!' another would cry. All the time he's in the boss's hut, painting the wife's portrait, these other wives are sitting outside in the heat, pouting like little girls."

"So what happened?" Gabe asked. "Did he ever paint any of them?"

"How'd the boss's wife's picture turn out?" I chimed in.

"Like shit," Grandpa Mendros laughed. "Like perfect shit. How's an artist going to paint a professional portrait when he constantly has one eye on the damsels outside? And, no, he never painted anybody else. The only train back to the border for the next four days was the 9:30 that evening, so that particular afternoon was all we ever saw of Mr. Botticelli. But would you believe the boss kept that damned portrait and told everybody it was a Picasso?"

Gabe stole a look at me and mouthed, He's funny as hell!

I already knew that, I mouthed back.

From that day, every time Mrs. Veedo disappeared with a promise to be late, Gabe and I became Grandpa Mendros's bartenders. It was perfect: Mrs. Veedo had an audience for her bored father, Gabe and I were in stitches, and the old man, for his part, was in blabberjab nirvana. How could anyone object? But no! When Mrs. Veedo came home early from coffee and lesson-planning at the department chair's house and caught her father polishing off a bottle of Bacardi light, she went ape. She tugged off her high-heeled shoe and heaved it at her husband. Throwing off-balance, she missed by a good three feet and swept a vase of white lilies off an end-table, which, of course, pissed her off even more. "I'm at Dolores Morrison's, comparing notes for a war crimes lecture," she howled, "and you're here getting my father drunk?!"

Gabe actually shouted, "Run, Jimmy, Run!" as if were playing out a scene from a cartoon.

Grandpa Mendros's eyes popped out, literally bulging in his head, Ripley's-Believe-it-or-Not-style.

I was the first and only Highland sophomore to witness the honors history teacher hurl her shoe at the band teacher. In front of an old man, no less.

Mrs. Veedo limped over to her father and yanked the empty bottle from his weak grasp. Then she hobbled to the front door, opened it, and tossed the bottle out onto the lawn. "He is not your entertainment!" she shouted. "He's not a clown! He's not living with us for your goddamned amusement!"

Gabe's silence turned to visible shame, but I rushed to his defense. "Just a minute," I said.

Mrs. Veedo leaned against the doorframe and crossed her arms. "The Boy Wonder has something to say?"

"Yes."

"So say it."

I composed myself, stood up straight, employed every trick I'd learned from freshman speech. "When I first met your father," I said, "he was so pathetic that his own daughter was tired of listening to him ramble."

"Oh?"

"You were so tired of him you had to hire one of your students to sit with him and pretend to be amazed at these ridiculous memories of his."

"Oh?"

"I used to laugh at him behind his back," I continued, growing more courageous and more fearful, simultaneously. "I used to tell Cheryl all about the wacky things he had to say, and we'd both sit in Vittorio's and laugh and laugh."

Gabe said, "Jimmy--"

"But I don't laugh behind his back anymore." I would be undeterred. "I laugh with him now! He's still as confused as he ever was, but he has friends now who share his confusion with him!"

Mrs. Veedo stared at me in disbelief. She scratched her head in the classic manifestation of bewilderment. "So this is good for him," she said, her voice ominously low. "This is what you're trying to tell me?"

Again, Gabe said, "Jimmy--"

"Yes," I answered, "I think it's been good for him."

"It's been good for him? This has been going on for some time, I gather, and it's been good for him."

"Yes."

"We might say that getting smashed in the afternoon is his salvation." She was terrifying in her one shoe, her arms crossed, her expression blank.

"Maybe it could be," I said. "Who knows?"

She looked across the room at her father, and I followed her gaze. Grandpa Mendros had no idea what was happening. He had never appeared so lost to me. He looked to be somewhere in the Sahara, or the Kalahari, or wherever, speeding across the vast terrain in a clanking Jeep, farther and farther back into the past, racing away from the horror of the present scene.

"You're a very intelligent young man, Jimmy," Mrs. Veedo said, though she still was looking at her poor father. "And you're a good kid, too. I wouldn't have hired you to sit with him if I didn't believe you were a good kid."

I wanted to say "Thank you," but, suddenly, no words would come.

"You're probably well-intentioned, too." She finally turned her head to look at me, and she sighed. "But you're still just a kid, Jimmy. And what I'm trying to say is that only a kid . . ." She turned momentarily to her husband before continuing, her eyes welling with tears. "Only a kid, or a miserable low-down lush, could embrace the kind of rationalization you just offered me." Leaving the door ajar, she moved across the room to retrieve her shoe. "I am neither, Jimmy," she said. "I am neither a child nor a drunk." She bent down, crying, and put her shoe back onto her foot. "I am a grown woman. And as a grown woman, I am able to comprehend the difference between comedy and mockery." Then, standing, she said, "Please don't forget to read the chapter on Nuremberg for Monday," and pointed toward the open door.

I looked to Gabe, who sat immobile, turned to stone.

So I left, closing the door gently behind me. I walked into the shabby grass for the empty rum bottle, fished around for it, found it, hid it awkwardly beneath my untucked shirt. I had come to this house almost every day for over two months, yet it had never occurred to me how badly the grass needed mowing.

I wasn't a musician, so I never saw Gabe at school. The band room was isolated from the rest of the campus, packed away behind the gymnasium so the tubas and clarinets and cymbals and drums wouldn't disturb the rest of us. I left lunch early on Monday, however, and spent five minutes standing outside the band room door. Mr. Veedo's voice was firm and clear and commanding. "We're going to run through this one again," I heard him say, "and again and again until it's perfect." Our band always received superior ratings at competitions. The band kids loved him. I wondered if they knew their beloved leader was an alcoholic. I wondered if they would care.

In fifth period honors world history we took notes on the Nuremberg trials. I hadn't read the chapter, but I lied and raised my hand when Mrs. Veedo asked who had. She smiled at me in her usual manner, as though Friday's events had never transpired.

The lecture turned to Martin Borman, who had been tried in absentia. She pointed to his name on the overhead, and I noticed she'd spelled it differently than the way I'd spelled it on my paper. Borman. Boorman.

Michaelena Martinez, who sat up front and found it impossible to make it through a lesson without submitting a question, raised her hand.

"Yes, Michaelena?" Mrs. Veedo said.

"I'm not sure I understand the term in absentia."

Mrs. Veedo nodded. "Good question," she said. "But if you look carefully at the words, their meaning just might become apparent to you."

Gary Wallace piped up, "He was absent. He wasn't present at his own trial."

Up, again, went Michaelena Martinez's hand.

"Yes, Michaelena?"

She put her pencil to her bottom lip, trying hard to puzzle this one out. "I don't understand how you can try a person who isn't present," she said. "How can you try a person who isn't there to speak for himself?"

"It would be ideal to have had Mr. Borman present to speak for himself," Mrs. Veedo responded, "but we live in an imperfect world. The sheer necessity of a tribunal was proof enough of that." She turned off the overhead and the room went dark. "In these cases, the court proceeded with what was necessary, and they tried their best to do justice."

After the bell, Mrs. Veedo called me to her desk.

I stayed behind as the rest of the class exited into the noisy hallway.

"You're still employed," Mrs. Veedo said. "I hope you didn't think I'd fired you. My father and I still need you very much." I stuffed my hands into my pockets.

"He'll need to share his stories until he dies, I suppose," she said. "And I hope that's not for a long, long time." I stared at the red gradebook on her desk.

"Will you be there for us this afternoon?"

"Of course," I said.

"Good." She extended her hand, and we shook on it.

That afternoon Grandpa Mendros told me about the rains, about how, once, for two weeks straight, it rained relentlessly, soaking the ground from Palapye to Francistown into a thick soup. The Batswana were incredulous. They ran about the village, shouting, "Noah! Noah!" and laughing until their sides ached.

Mrs. Veedo entered the room. She kissed her father's cheek and said, "I'll be back in a couple of hours, Dad." She was off to Dolores Morrison's, I supposed, to discuss whatever the hell would come after Nuremberg.

Gabe joined Grandpa Mendros and me after she'd left. He handed each of us a Coke. "So what's this about rains?" he asked. "I missed most of that one."

Grandpa Mendros looked to me, then back to Gabe, then back to me.

"The rains," I said.

"What rains?"" asked Grandpa Mendros.