At Home with Frodo at World’s End

I live in a hobbit house. If only for a week. A ninety-eight year old man owns the place. I imagine him as a compassionate and somewhat distinguished Quaker gentleman. After all he had once argued for the life of the man who had murdered his daughter. I had checked it out. But it turns out he is a small balding man with a large stomach and bad breath who leers at me and tells me a story about a young heroin addict who once stayed there and offered herself to him for money.  I can outrun you, old man, I think. His son lives there too. I am guessing he is in his sixties, sinewy and tan with the vacant expression that results from years of what I imagine was regular drug use. He has long hair streaked with gray and his eyes are bright yet empty in the way of Frodo when he was wounded by the Ringwraith's blade . He wears cutoff jeans. Emerging from my car late one night,  I see him leap off the patio and stride across the lawn, bare chested and barefoot, holding a harpoon gun pointed at me. I step out of the shadows so he can see my face. Recognition is slow in coming but when it finally appears, he is all smiles and invitations to go harpoon fishing with him and his two friends. At night. In the ocean. No thank you. The friends, a young Hawaiin man and an old woman with stringy hair stare at me as I politely refuse. They mutter to each other and I see nine teeth between the two of them. Up the stone stairs, into my round room, and I lock the door. Someone blows a conch shell and I imagine the gathering of strange indigenous tribes.