The Bigamist: A love story

By Jim Mitcham

The Bigamist is a family story told of my grandfather, several greats back, who served in the Confederate Army. He was reported killed in the Battle of Antietam in Maryland, though he was only wounded and spent the rest of the war in a Yankee prison camp in Chicago. When he returned home, he discovered his wife, who had though him dead, had remarried for protection of herself and the children. The results and the remainder of the story have been created through my imagination. I hope you enjoy reading this story half as much as I did writing it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098018535

Book preview

Chapter 1

He was born August 29, 1836, in the small town of Fairfield, Kentucky, to James and Elisa Boone, their sixth and what would be their final child and the fourth boy. He was named Taylor James Boone. They were sure he would grow up to be a lawyer because he screamed almost from the time he came out of the womb and for days after that. Taylor’s siblings were Thomas, Arthur, Daniel, Patty, and Georgia in that order. Taylor was an active child and inquisitive boy; he was into everything. He loved to fish, and when old enough to hunt (twelve years old), he was pretty good at both, a natural good shot. When they got together for family shooting contests, both the boys and the girls, Taylor, although he was the youngest, always won. He could hit a stone when it was thrown into the air with his rifle shooting from the hip. He provided food for the family in both areas and always brought more and bigger fish in than anyone else. Then to make things better for him, he was blessed with a mentor concerning hunting and trapping.

Willie, an older neighbor, was skilled in both of them, and the boy was a sponge when it came to absorbing what Willie had to show him and teach him. It was too bad, his mother thought, that the same skill was not present in the classroom. It wasn’t long before he had his own traps and was getting good at the art of trapping. Not only was he providing food for the table, but the pelts brought a good price and helped improve the family’s resources. His mom and dad started to think that maybe Taylor had a better future than the law, and perhaps they needed to change their opinion on that matter. Taylor learned to stretch and dry the pelts, increasing the value of his catches, kills, or trappings.

Part of Taylor’s school problem was he was often out late with Willie. Willie had a great coon dog named Rosko, and he and Taylor—and sometimes James, Taylor’s dad, would come along—loved to spend the nights listening to Rosko bay as he followed the trail of a raccoon. They would often just sit and talk as they listened to Rosko’s music and would guess where they thought he would have the coon treed. All that supposition ended once Rosko’s bark changed, and there was no doubt that he had the coon up a tree. Rosko continued to talk until they reached him. The excitement when the baying changed was music to their ears, and they were up and running through the dark woods toward the dog as fast as they could run. Taylor said he would rather shake the animal out of the tree and kill it when it landed on the ground, but Willie had to have a good hold on Rosko, or he would break loose and attack the coon. Rosko would win but would get torn up with the razor-like claws of the raccoon. Willie would rather shoot the animal out of the tree and protect his ole coonhound. Taylor, on the other hand, was into pelts, and that meant a hole and sometimes two holes in the pelt. This discussion went on every time they arrived at the tree where Rosko had the raccoon treed. Coon pelts brought a good price, and the meat wasn’t bad either. Taylor was always asking Willie how to do something regarding tapping or how to avoid getting the human smell on the traps.

The downside of Taylor spending so much time with Willie was that he got introduced to liquor as Willie always had a flask of moonshine in his pocket. Although the flask didn’t appear when James was with them, it was there when dad couldn’t make it. When they were alone, they would often build a fire and sit around it, listening to Rosko while sipping on the flask and talking. It kept them warm, and it excited Taylor and made him feel all grown up at the ancient age of thirteen. Taylor, through his association with Willie became, what to all appearances was, an alcoholic by the age of fourteen, which added to his schooling problems. Then he then became friends with an even worse associate, an inexperienced young man that wanted to be a trapper, who was an excellent moonshiner and who had his own still.

Art was not the student that Taylor was, or maybe it was that Taylor wasn’t the teacher that Willie was, but Art was excellent when it came to making moonshine. With the tutoring of Taylor, he was learning. Unfortunately, the cost of tutoring was paid in alcohol from the still, and Taylor became badly hooked on an abundance of moonshine. He and Art spent all their time together fishing, hunting, trapping, and drinking—and not necessarily in that order. Taylor was either drunk or on the way to getting drunk most all the time, and despite all the nagging of his mother and the warnings of his father, he kept it up. The drinking got so bad that he had to quit school, and his trapping fell way off and cut badly into his and the family income, and cut even more into his pride.

Willie finally came to Taylor one day and told him to either stop trapping or to lay off the sauce because he was giving trapping a bad name and probably running off many of the animals through his inept trapping. It is hard, if not impossible, to set a trap successfully when you are drunk or even high. Trapping, at least for the valuable pelts like mink and ermine, require precise skills. The traps must be set exactly right, or you will not be successful in catching either. The trap must be set so that the trigger was not visible to the animal you were trying to trap, and in the case of many animals, and especially the mink and ermine, odor was also a serious problem. If the human scent was detected, the animal would avoid the area and the trap altogether.

Because of Willie’s warning and Taylor’s pride in trapping, he was able to cut back on the moonshine consumption and eventually give it up entirely. Perhaps he wasn’t the alcoholic he had appeared to be after all. He first reduced the hours spent with Art and then told him he wasn’t going to drink any longer, and he should find someone else to teach him to trap because the smell of alcohol on Art tempted him to have a drink, and so they no longer palled around together, to the delight of his mother and dad. Almost immediately, his success in trapping increased, as well as the family income.

Chapter 2

Taylor’s sobriety was changing him for the better. He had, at his mother’s urging, gone back to school and even attended church on a fairly regular basis. Then one summer Sunday, something happened that would change Taylor’s life in a mighty way forever. There was a beautiful young lady with gorgeous blonde hair streaming down her back. She was up from Georgia with her family visiting her aunt and uncle, and they attended the same church as the Boones. She and her family had come to church with her aunt and uncle that particular day, and once Taylor saw her, he took a shine to her in a big way. He was smitten, and the courting began. He would go over to her aunt and uncle’s almost every day after school, and he even took June wildflowers that he had picked on one occasion.

Taylor was a good-looking young man, and at fifteen, he was near six feet tall and had black curly hair. They would sit on the porch swing and talk for hours on end and would often go for walks. Martha, June’s mother, came out one day to meet this young man who seemed so taken with her daughter and asked him about his family. Taylor told her about his brothers and sisters and his mom and dad, and that they had lived in Turkey Town for a long time.

In an effort to have an excuse to spend more time with June, Taylor one day brought his gear and taught June to fish in her uncle’s pond. She didn’t like putting the worms on the hook, but she really got excited when a fish got on the line. He spent nearly every day with her, and they became inseparable. He really loved being with her. Then one day, without warning, June was gone. The family had left rather suddenly because of a problem at home in Georgia, her aunt told him. Taylor was lost and lonely and not sure what to do with himself. He went over to June’s aunt and uncle’s and asked them about her and found from her uncle that his brother Silas lived in Macon, Georgia, and that they had a problem with some cattle, and they had to get home immediately.

What he had become mostly his entire reason for living had been taken away. He moped around the house for weeks before finally talking with his mom and dad about going and finding her. He told them that he loved her and wanted to make her his wife. His mother said, Taylor, you are only fifteen and hardly know what life is all about. Stop and think about what this all means, and I’m sure you will reconsider going so far away all alone at your age, looking for a girl that you don’t even know reciprocates your so-called love. But Taylor had made up his mind to go south and find June himself and couldn’t be persuaded otherwise. He would ask her to marry him, get a job, or there must be trapping in Georgia too. He would survive if only he could be with June again. The boy had it bad, and he felt there was only one cure. So despite his mother’s pleadings and his father’s stern warnings, he was heading south. Despite all the comments from his brothers and sisters about how crazy it was to do this, no one could change his mind. He was going to find June or die trying.

Chapter 3

Taylor knew June lived in Macon, Georgia, but he had no idea where that was or how long it would take him to walk there. His dad had an idea where Macon was and said it was in Georgia but had never been there and didn’t know how far it was. He told Taylor that it was a long way and that he probably would never make it all alone and at his young age. This didn’t deter Taylor as he desperately wanted to see June again and was sure he could make it. He talked with his dad because he had no idea what he would need for the trip. His dad said, Wait a few years until you are a little older, but his determination to get to June was a strong driving force that propelled him forward—or southward, as it was. He had decided to go no matter what and no matter how far or how hard it was. If he didn’t make it and died on the road, he wouldn’t be any deader than if he stayed home and died of a broken heart.

So he started with his trapping backpack, and after removing most of the traps, he began by thinking of his food supply and started loading flour, sugar, salt-cured bacon from the family smokehouse. He wrapped some biscuits and some corn bread from his mom’s larder. Taylor would add to that with what he could trap, kill, or catch. Flint and steel he would need to be able to start a fire for cooking, some fishing line and hooks. He could make a pole out of a branch from a tree with his hunting knife. He would need socks and a change of underwear and a light coat. He would take his boots, most importantly his rifle for hunting, and some powder, balls, patches, and flint. Boy, the backpack was getting heavy already. Soap, he needed soap for the baths he would take in creeks or ponds, and a towel. Damn, he needed a bigger backpack and a stronger back to carry it on.

He removed the traps he had planned to take and substituted some leather line for a snare. Out went the sugar (he could do without it), but he had to add a frying pan and talked his mom out of an old one. But all she had that she could spare was an old cast-iron thing that was heavy as lead. Taylor sat wondering what he was forgetting; what would he need that he wouldn’t have since he had never attempted anything like this before? He had no history to draw from, and his dad and his brothers were of little or no help and probably wouldn’t have helped if they could since they thought he was out of his mind.

After much thought, he decided he would have to take his chances and make do with what he had and perhaps buy other necessities along the way. He had some money saved from trapping and could hire himself out to farmers along the way if need be. His sister Georgia told him that she understood what he was feeling and asked him to be careful and to write and let them know how it went. At least one family member was on his side.

Taylor loaned his traps to Willie for safekeeping until he got back, kissed his mother and shook hands with his dad, and told his brothers and sisters goodbye.

Chapter 4

On the morning of May 12, 1851, at the tender young age of fifteen and a half, Taylor said goodbye to his mom and what siblings that were still at home and headed south all alone riding shanks mare, a saying his dad used to explain walking or riding on the shank of your shoes. As he walked, he thought about all the things he had packed and wondered not as much about what he forgot but more importantly what he had packed and was carrying that he would never use and that was making his pack so damn heavy. One thing for sure he wasn’t taking with him was his mother’s cooking and was already missing that. He used his compass and followed wagon trails as long as they headed south, but when they changed to east or west, Taylor would take to the fields, sometimes picking up the trails later on.

His rifle got awful heavy, and he wished for a sling so he could carry the weight on his shoulder rather than his arm, he would have to work on that when he got to a town. Without a map or any idea how far it was to Macon, Georgia, and no way of knowing how far he traveled each day, it was hard to measure his progress. He knew each day he was closer to June and was really enjoying the wild outdoors, at least when it didn’t rain as it had been for the last two days, and so on he went.

It was so peaceful and beautiful, with only the birds’ songs and wind rustling in the leaves to entertain him. He shot a rabbit the second day out and built a fire and cooked and ate his first real meal. It sure tasted good and would have been better had he remembered salt, what a dummy. Taylor was reluctant to discard the pelt from his first kill, so he tied it inside out on the outside on his pack and let the sun dry it for him. It wasn’t properly stretched, but at least it wasn’t wasted, and it didn’t add much to the weight of the pack. He discovered after a while that the pack started to feel at home on his back, and the weight bothered him less and less as his back became stronger and accustomed to the weight.

Taylor found himself whistling, and he even broke into a song once as he went along and found he was really enjoying the trip and feeling confident that he could make it and could take care of himself. The next night, he camped near a beautiful still pond surrounded by cattails. He wakened in the morning and quietly slipped up behind the reeds and cattails and did some fishing with the aid of a branch and his fishing hook and line and a few worms dug out of the ground with his knife. He soon had a mess of fish that he cleaned and cooked for breakfast. Man, they tasted fine and would have been better with a little salt. Another thing he missed was coffee; he had run off without any at all. With a full belly and pride and confidence that he was able to care for himself, he traveled south, another day closer to June.

Chapter 5

Taylor had crossed several creeks, but today he was faced with crossing a good-sized river where he would have to swim some and wade in chest-high water. Swimming was not a problem as he was a good swimmer, but how to keep his gear dry as he crossed? Taylor looked around and found several dry branches that he could break or cut to the size needed for a raft and use the leather he had brought for his snares and some of his fishing line to lash them together. He placed his pack, tied his rifle and his boots on the raft, and started out into the water carefully to test this homemade raft. To his delight, it floated, and he was able to follow holding on with his hands while he kicked his feet moving out into the river.

The water was chilly at first, but he soon became accustomed to it. He felt like he was getting somewhat of a bath, at least with his feet, and the cold water was welcome to the