I Cannot Finish My Story

I am too tired to write the last couple hundred words. I am completely daunted about revising this from “people sit around tables talking to each other” to “things happen.”

But I got to invent a Led Zeppelin song and then have my bad guy steal it from the world.

See, before she fucked things up, J.D. Short’s ‘Wake Up Bright Eye Mama’ was never lost, so Led Zeppelin got to steal it and make it into one of their most famous hits. And now, sadly, we live in a world where Led Zeppelin’s ‘Bright-Eyed Mama’ will never be heard.

And I love that so much that, even if everything else in the story is an unfinished mess, I am happy.

Sonnyboy, The Bouncer?

So, because I trust Coble’s body, which says cold weather is on its way, I decided to walk the dog instead of spending the afternoon writing. So, there we were, walking, when who should drive up but my old neighbor! Blah blah blah, we’re sitting in the middle of the road, talking. It’s not that interesting except that Sonnyboy was not interested in greeting my old neighbor. No. Instead, he sat right up against me, right between us. He wasn’t mean or angry or aggressive in any manner. It was as if someone had put a disinterested ottoman between us.

But it impressed the shit out of me. And made me feel like he was just letting me know that he had my back.

Also, I will reiterate that, as much as he dislikes the head harness and has to let me know by rolling down the hill once we get off the road in an unusually obnoxious manner, it makes him a million times easier to walk which makes me a million times more likely to take him for spontaneous walks.

Why Joseph is On My Mind

I’m in the middle of working out the details, so I’ll leave it intentionally vague, but I might have occasion in April to talk to people who are intensely curious about him about the kinds of things I’ve discovered, so that it might aid in their attempts to do their own research on him.

The absolute biggest obstacle to researching him is that his last name isn’t standardized, nor that distinct, and his first name is “Joe.” If you know that Timothy Demonbreun spent time in Vincennes, was an important politico in Kaskaskia, and traded down in New Orleans, as well as doing shit here, when you come across anything about Timothy Demorgbbuelrembum or Timothy Mmmmbmbmbm or all the ways they could have slaughtered his last name, you can kind of sound out the last name, decide it sounds close enough to “Demonbreun” and put it on your list of potential Timothy Demonbreun sightings.

But that’s not exactly the case for Joseph. However, once you know that the guy who is “Joseph Deraque” in the State Papers and in the state legislature records is also the guy married to “Granny Ratt” and thus also referred to as “Joseph Duratt” or “Joseph DuRat” and that Elizabeth Girard in the 1850 census living with Demonbreun grandchildren with children all named “Durard” is our same old Elizabeth providing us with two more forms of his name.

And then, interestingly enough, even though, in the State Papers, in his first person account, they spell it Deraque, at the end of one of the narratives, it says “Joseph Deratte, his+mark Robert Hays Justice of the Peace.” Now, the reason this interests me are two-fold. Deratte or De Ratte is a last name French people had in the 1700s and it would seem to indicate that, though they were spelling his name Deraque, he signed it “Deratte.” Meaning, that’s his name.

So, if you were going to look for his parents in Canada, you could do worse than to start there.

(Just as a side note, I’m not going to be at all surprised if Joseph and Timothy also end up being related.)