“Information was scarce, but he learned what he could about what was at the time called gay-related immune deficiency. He learned that it was fatal. He learned that it might be possible to pass it to sex partners, and even though he and Phyllis were no longer physical, he thought about how he’d kissed her on the cheek a few times, and he sobbed in the library. He stole the medical journal he was reading, and he played hooky from work for a week, wondering what he was supposed to do. No doctors in Montana would know anything about what was then called GRID.”

“GRID!” I yell. “That was in the letter. ‘The world’s most dangerous and expensive grid’! What’s KSREF?”

“Oh!” Turk blurts, like he’s been goosed. “Blast from the past! The … Kaposi’s Sarcoma Research and Education … Foundation, I suppose?”

“Wow,” I say. “So not a Kansas referee?”

He smiles. It’s a sad smile, but it makes me feel closer to him.

“So anyway, Montana doctors had no idea what was going on, since it was happening in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. And even if they did, this was Billings, Montana. Russ knew if anyone found out, he’d bring shame to his family.

“Finally he gathered up the courage to tell his boss.”

“Pastor John,” I interrupt him.

“Yes, you mentioned him earlier. A name I had enjoyed not thinking about for a long time. So he told this Pastor John fellow, his best friend, and the man was good to him. To some degree, anyway. Your grandfather didn’t have much money saved up, and he knew he had to get to San Francisco for treatment. The pastor helped him get here. He used church funds to pay for Russ’s trip, and he created something of an underground railroad of religious friends for him to stay with. It was quite a journey.”

“I know my granddad joined AA along the way.”

Turk smiles. “A good thing too. Because when Russ got to San Francisco, he called his friend Graham. Graham, God rest his soul, had one friend who was in AA, and that friend was me. So when Russ arrived in town, guess who got to take him to his first meeting here?”

Turk looks out into the distance. A serene expression passes over his face.

“We fell in love almost right away. He was such a big, goofy guy. I get that when he was an active drunk, he was awful to be around, and there were moments when it was awful here too. Not easy, giving up the booze. But mostly he was sweet and incredibly creative.

“One morning in bed, I asked him for some orange juice. He went to the kitchen and didn’t return, and I started to wonder if he’d heard me. Ten minutes later, he came back and handed me a piece of paper. He’d drawn three rabbis wearing orange coats in Magic Marker. At the bottom, he wrote, ‘Orange Jews.’ ”

I shiver. “Oh my God. I would do that,” I say.

“You poor kid,” he says.

“I know.”

“The thing is, his health got better. Thanks to AA, he certainly got happier. His face got brighter and you could see that he was shining through, because for the first time in his life, he was himself, totally.

“We set up house, and, well, I was sick too. A few times, he had to nurse me through stuff. Pneumonia, mostly. And I had to nurse him through some ugly stuff as well. But we persevered. We went to AA meetings five times a week, and we talked about life and I learned to understand his faith, and by the end, it became a much kinder faith. He was a lovely, lovely man.

“In the late summer of 1984, he came down with a cold. A simple cold. But it stayed. One night, he woke me up gasping for breath, and I just knew. I rushed him to the hospital. It was pneumocystis, which was the pneumonia that killed so many people early on in the epidemic. And like he had a ‘Kick me’ sign on him, as they were treating him for that, the spots activated. The KS. They attacked his mouth and then his lungs and then, well, then. He just …”

Turk wipes a tear out of his right eye.

“It was so fast. He was my life. When he died, my heart died. Somehow I survived long enough to get the cocktail of drugs that’s kept me alive, but that’s a part of me that didn’t make it. I’ve dated since, but never once have I allowed anyone to move in, because they couldn’t possibly take his place. He’s that one-of-a-kind person we all search for. He’d serenade me in the evening, making up nonsense songs that were so, so strange and so, so funny.”

“I just read his song ‘Three Sightless Rodents,’ ” I say.

He looks up at me, and I sing it to Turk.

“Three sightless rodents, three sightless rodents. See how they perambulate, see how they perambulate. They all perambulated after the agriculturist’s spouse. She cut off their lower extremities with a utensil designed for the dissection of meat. Have you ever seen such a spectacle in all your existence, as three sightless rodents, three sightless rodents.”

This makes him laugh, and the laugh soon turns to sobs, and he puts his head in his hands and his thick back heaves up and down. I don’t know what to do, so I put my hand on his neck. It feels interesting. Like I’m touching family, in a way. And I am.

He finally wipes away the wetness from his face and wipes his nose a few times too. I reach into my pocket and pull out one of the unused Kleenexes he handed me back in the church. He takes it and thanks me.

“His biggest regret was that he never made peace with your father,” he says. “Pastor Logan asked him not to tell anyone, even his wife. The help was conditional. The money came from the church, and the pastor was petrified of a scandal. What if his congregants found out that their money was going to someone with gay cancer?”

“Whoa,” I say.

“Yes, well. Anyhow, Russ disobeyed that and did tell Phyllis, and she was so angry and ashamed. She demanded that he not tell your father. And it tore him up that he couldn’t, but he promised her…. They got divorced by mail. Afterward, it plagued Russ, knowing that his son didn’t know where he was. And many times, he woke me up crying. He knew he’d hurt Phyllis, but he couldn’t understand why she’d punish Matthew. He wrote him a letter, telling him the truth. But he just couldn’t mail it, and that was a failing on his part. I still have trouble forgiving him for that, for leaving it untended and for leaving it on me.”

“What about all the letters we found?”

“The unreadable ones?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, if they hadn’t been unreadable, you’d know that they were all birthday cards. The first two were from Russ. He decided that he’d keep it light and avoid any mention of what was going on, in the hopes that Phyllis would have a change of heart and let Matthew see them. A couple months after he died, I took over the practice and sent your father a birthday card. Mine was not so tame, as I hadn’t made any agreement with Phyllis, and I felt Matthew had the right to know. So in that first card, I explained to him what had happened. I hoped that by leaving off the return address, it might get past your grandmother, and for the first decade or so I included an address inside the notes, in case he wanted to write back. I so wanted to know your father, but he never responded. I was never sure if that was his choice or Phyllis’s. How long ago did she die?”

“Seven years ago.”

“Hmm,” Turk says. “Where did you find the letters?”

“In a box with all of his stuff, at the pastor’s place.”

“So if your grandmother was intercepting my notes before she died, apparently Pastor Logan took it on himself to keep up the practice.”

I think back to something weird my dad told me the first time I saw him back in Billings.

“My dad said the pastor always brought in my dad’s mail. He must have been funneling the letters out for years. Why would he do that?”

Turk looks angry. He shakes his head. “Beats the hell out of me. Did you know I went to Billings? Did you know I met your father and grandmother?”