Tall tales of Cape Cod

Fate, that capricious ruler of the tides that governs our lives, arranged a meeting on the wild, windswept Hill of Storms in Truro on Cape Cod; a meeting so strange that, for the sake of credulity, I must withhold the name of the earthly being who took part in it. For it was on a dark Fall night, long ago, that a Cape Cod boy, with nothing in his pockets but his dreams and a burning ambition, met and talked with a live skeleton, and, caught up on the crest of Fate’s precarious wave, was swept high to Fame and Fortune.

We will call him Tom, and nothing else, this young and ardent hero of our story, for if, in the telling of this strange tale, which I swear to be true, the real name of the young man were disclosed, you, gentle reader, would scoff and read no further.

A look at young Tom as this amazing story unfolds would reveal a singularly insignificant youth, dreamy of eye and slight of form. Tom burned with that white flame of ambition thwarted by a financial standing about equal to that of a beachcomber, and a scanty country education. But youth has strange ways of overcoming such obstacles, and Tom’s energies, rather than diminishing, seemed to gather momentum and strength from the meagre stuff upon which they were fed. Why or how, cut off as he was from higher learning, Tom chose Anatomy as his field to conquer, no one knows, but chose it he did. He spent every waking hour and every dream yearning for the day when he would be able to buy for himself the text books that would pave his rocky road to Success. A penny here, and, a week later, a penny there—finally Tom was able to purchase a small text on Anatomy. In less than three weeks, he had memorized, with the correct Latin names thrown in for good measure, every word, every definition, every diagram in the text book. This subject was his life, and he wrapped himself so completely in his fierce desires that to shake hands with a man became not merely a gesture of friendship, but a good chance to feel the finger bones manipulate. But, happily, Tom was too intelligent not to know that this knowledge, although he could describe exactly the position, use, and articulation of every bone in the human body, did not make him an anatomist. For his descriptions were merely a repetition of the words in the small book which had become his bible. His burning desires now changed course to those of seeing and examining an actual skeleton, and these thoughts buzzed around in his mind like a swarm of angry bees.

A pensive, solitary figure, Tom sat one night by the huge fireplace in the local Inn, lost in thought and dream. The flames in the fire before him took the shape of grinning, cavorting skeletons. He was so absorbed in his dream-world that the noisy animation and conversation about him pricked his consciousness no harder than a fly on an elephant’s hide. The men were talking, as they had for weeks, about old Cyrus Goodestone, a man always thought of as rich, but who had died without a trace of money to be found anywhere, much to the distress of his creditors.

But when, during one of those violent and sudden early Spring rain storms, the door of the Inn flew open, and a hooded and cloaked stranger strode into the room, even Tom took notice. For the stranger stood before the fire, his back to the company, and neither spoke nor turned when greeted. The storm stopped as suddenly as it had started, and when the moonlight shone once more through the window, the stranger heeled about, gathered his voluminous cloak more closely about him, and left. An eeler, sitting near Tom, spoke up:

“That be a queer chap. I’m a-goin’ to see what he’s about,” and with these words, he too left the Inn.

Less than five minutes later, he returned, white as a flounder’s belly. He made a beeline for the table, and gulped down a glass of rum. Then, gasping, partly from fright and partly from the raw drink of rum, he spoke.

“Udds hiddikins! Old chap just gone out—got no proper face like—only a Death’s head—looked me square in the face in the moonlight, he did, and I c’n tell ye, I waited to see no more!”

At this startling tale, Tom sprang from his lethargy like a man possessed, and clutching the terrified eeler by the coat lapels, he yelled, “You mean—he was a skeleton?” When the answer was a startled “yes,” Tom shouted, “Which way did he go?”

“Why, down towards the graveyard, sure,” said the eeler. But Tom was out the door before the words had barely tickled the lips of the eeler.

No thought that the eeler might have been “seein’ things” entered Tom’s mind and he tore down the road toward the graveyard on Truro’s Hill of Storms. The wild wind, the scudding clouds that made the night a night of shadows, the bony-fingered branches that picked at his face as he ran through the shortcut in the woods—of these things Tom was unaware. For on the Hill of Storms, midst gravestones battered by sea winds and spray, was his heart’s desire!

Tom stood at the top of the hill, bracing himself against the sea wind. His heart thudded against his ribs like the heavy breakers that boomed against the rocks below. His wild eyes swept the graveyard, and then, in the split second when the clouds parted, and the moon shone through, Tom saw, still enveloped in the cloak, the figure from the Inn, gazing sorrowfully down at the new grave marker of Cyrus Goodestone. Then, in a sudden sweep of wind, the cloak billowed up, fell to the ground—and left, gleaming phosphorously in the misty moonlight, the unbelievable figure of a Skeleton!

“Thank my stars!” yelled Tom. “I have found my Skeleton at last!”

“Young man,” said the Skeleton in a hollow voice, clacking his hideous hinged jaws, “Attend!”

“How beautifully,” cried Tom, ignoring the command, “can I see the play of the lower maxilliary!”

“Attend, I say!” repeated the Skeleton, in a still more frightening voice. And then, turning, “Rash boy, what are you about?” exclaimed the bony apparition. The fact is, our enthralled hero was busily running his fingers up and down the vertebrae of the Skeleton, counting them to see if they corresponded with the number given in his book, and muttering gleefully, “Seven cervical, twelve dorsal—just right!”

The Skeleton, angered and shocked speechless, raised his arm and shook his fist at the absorbed Tom, who, with his eyes fixed on the bony elbow, merely shouted joyfully, “The gingyloid movement is perfect!”

The Skeleton was plainly confused. Never before had he, accustomed to scaring the wits out of people, encountered any such attitude as this, for Tom stood before him completely unafraid. He was amazed at the scientific stand taken by our young anatomist. As a matter of fact, the skeleton began to feel a little wary himself, and moved away from Tom, darting in and out from behind the gravestones in an effort to get away. But Tom was not to be put off at this late date, and overtaking the Skeleton, grabbed on and held for all he was worth.

The ensuing conversation, however, was friendly, and the Skeleton explained that he was old Cyrus Goodestone himself. He had, he said, buried his money underground, and could not rest in peace until he had dug it up and paid off his creditors. This he asked Tom to do. Tom consented, upon one condition, which he laid in a very businesslike manner before the Skeleton.

“It will be some trouble,” he said, “and the affair is none of mine, but look ye—I’m willing to comply with your request, if, as a reward, you will allow me to come here and study you every night for the next month. You may then retire to rest for as long a time as you please.”

“Agreed!” cried the Skeleton, and, recovering from his original alarm, shook hands with the exultant Tom to seal this strange bargain.

Tom found the money, just as the Skeleton had said, distributed it among the amazed creditors of Cyrus Goodestone, and passed every night for the next month in the graveyard on the Hill of Storms. There, amidst the gravestones, he studied his accommodating Skeleton, who, as it turned out, was a congenial and humorous fellow. The Skeleton tirelessly moved into any position or pose Tom requested, giving the young anatomist an opportunity no other had ever, or will ever have, that of watching the actual bone movement of a live Skeleton!

By the end of the month, Tom and his Skeleton were warm friends, for they had discussed many things, and had played cribbage by the grave of Cyrus Goodestone, upon many occasions when the night’s posing was done. They parted with regrets, and the Skeleton wished Tom success and happiness in his career.

Tom completely retained in his mind all he had observed in his amazing month’s study, and by that knowledge, laid the foundation of a profound anatomical science by which he was afterwards to become famous.

It is needless to state that the above is the early history of an obscure Cape Cod boy with a dream who became a famous anatomist, and that any and all other accounts are baseless fabrications.