Tom is a god. Literally, anywhere I've seen him, when we're out with him, people just stop on the street. They're like, 'Tom!' They want his autograph, pictures taken with him. It's like he's a rock star.

Their conversation ceased abruptly with the entry of an oddly-shaped man whose body resembled a certain vegetable. He was a thickset fellow with calloused and jaundiced skin and a patch of brown hair, a frizzy upheaval. We will call him Bell Pepper. Bell Pepper sidled up beside The Drippy Man and looked at the grilled cheese in his hand. The Drippy Man, a bit uncomfortable at the heaviness of the gaze, politely apologized and asked Bell Pepper if he would like one.

“Why is one of your legs fatter than the other?” asked Bell Pepper.

The Drippy Man realized Bell Pepper was not looking at his sandwich but towards the inconsistency of his leg sizes.

“You always get your kicks pointing out defects?” retorted The Drippy Man.

“Just curious. Never seen anything like it before.”

“I was raised not to feel shame and hide my legs in baggy pants.”

“So you flaunt your deformity by wearing short shorts?”

“Like you flaunt your pockmarks by not wearing a mask?”

Bell Pepper backed away, kicking wide the screen door, making an exit to a porch over hanging a dune of sand that curved into a jagged upward jab of rock.

“He is quite sensitive,” commented The Dry Advisor.

“Who is he?”

“A fellow who once manipulated the money in your wallet but now curses the fellow who does.

A beverage of leisure is a serious business,” Shane Bowermaster was known to declare. “There can be no product of pleasure without the inverse on the end of the producer.

Dad was never the type to write a 'gotcha' book. He was never going to divulge things that coaches had spoken with him in private. He may not have agreed with all the decisions the coaches made, but he supported them.

Dad was in position with having to move on. He and Hatfield struck up a relationship, had a lot of the same life experiences, and they had a friendship that continued until the day Dad died.

That's where the title came from. He still had things to say. It just wasn't in God's plan to say it in person.