feldman

Tom Tadalafil hadn't always been the village idiot, in point of fact, the stooped yet quick-stepped gaffer with the fever-bright eyes had once been an elderly statesman of the shire, the trusted apothecary who'd worked with the old physic Gherkin and his son, Baby Doc Gherkin to ease the folks of the shire through many a season of disease and discontent, when the winter winds cooped every hobbit in his home with only his mutinied lungs and sinuses, and his equally miserable family, for company, or when young hobbits came home from wading for tadpoles in the Murk Bog with as many parasites in their livers as twigs and leaves in their hair. His careful potions and clever preparations eased many a hobbit through injury and illness, helped many a mother to deliver her little hobbit-babe into the cozy bosom of the Shire, and assisted many a farmer in compiling the proper compost to combat blossom end rot on their tomato crop. Tom Tadalafil had been a master chymist, and yet now he is a shambles of his former self, much to the sorrow and chagrin of his fellows in the Shire.

Not a day goes by without some poor hobbit suffering the bizarre ministrations of Tom Tadalafil, his impertinent questions bellowed across the marketplace, his mysterious crocks of unguent and powders set on the lintel, his hissed whispers of "I see the hair on your feet is less than silky--be sure to ask Baby Doc about my new foot soak!"

Doc Gherkin, in the prime of respectable middle age but still referred to as Baby Doc by the older hobbits of the Shire, would open his door to another bewildered patient stammering a question about some kind of balm that Tom Tadalafil had insisted on, or waving a handbill crammed with Tom Tadalafil's crabbed handwriting, or, in rare cases, in tears from confusion and shame at some physical deficiency they'd just found out they had after a chance meeting with Tom Tadalafil.

Baby Doc Gherkin would do his best to ease his patient's fears and anxieties, and sometimes he'd send them home with a small jar of salve to make them feel better. That it also reduced the size of the imposing stack of tubs and pots along his walls that threatened to cut off the sunlight through his windows was not enough of a boon to keep Baby Doc's frustration from growing. Yesterday, he'd had to send Lillian Lunghammer off to the Shire in the Other Dell for the proper topical cream for her boy's mutton-eye. A tricky case of mutton-eye it was, needing fresh ointment that was best prepared by the Shire's own apothecary, but alas, this was not to be had, as Tom Tadalafil was busy at the farm market, badgering honest folks about their genital warts.