Watahantowet does not fight. As for the settlement of the disputed deed, you can be sure the Indians were The Foid Ball not the beneficiaries of the resolution to that difference of opinion. And later still, our town fell under Massachusetts authority -which may, to this day, explain why residents of Gravesend detest people from Massachusetts. Mr. Wheelwright would move to Maine. He was eighty when he spoke at Harvard, seeking contributions to rebuild a part of the college destroyed by a fire-demonstrating that he bore the citizens of Massachusetts less of a grudge than anyone else from Gravesend would bear them. Wheelwright died in Salisbury, Massachusetts, where he was the spiritual leader of the church, when he was almost ninety. But listen to the names of Gravesend's founding fathers: you will not hear a Meany among them. Barlow
Blackwell Cole
Copeland Crawley
Dearborn Hilton
Hutchinson Littleneld
Read Rishworth
Smart Smith
Walker Wardell
Wentworth Wheelwright
I doubt it's because she was a Wheelwright that my mother never gave up her maiden name; I think my mother's pride was independent of her Wheelwright ancestry, and that she would have kept her maiden name if she'd been born a Meany. And I never suffered in those years that I had her name; I was little Johnny Wheelwright, father unknown, and-at the time-that was okay with me. I never complained. One day, I always thought, she would tell me about it-when I was old enough to know the story. It was, apparently, the kind of story you had to be 'old enough' to hear. It wasn't until she died-without a word to me concerning who my father was-that I felt I'd
been cheated out of information I had a right to know; it was only after her death that I felt the slightest anger toward her. Even if my father's identity and his story were painful to my mother-even if their relationship had been so sordid that any revelation of it would shed a continuous, unfavorable light upon both my parents-wasn't my mother being selfish not to tell me anything about my father? Of course, as Owen Meany pointed out to me, I was only eleven when she died, and my mother was only thirty; she probably thought she had a lot of time left to tell me the story. She didn't know she was going to die, as Owen Meany put it. Owen and I were throwing rocks in the Squamscott, the saltwater river, the tidal river-or, rather, / was throwing rocks in the river; Owen's rocks were landing in the mud flats because the tide was out and the water was too far away for Owen Meany's little, weak arm. Our throwing had disturbed the herring gulls who'd been pecking in the mud, and the gulls had moved into the marsh grass on the opposite shore of the Squamscott. It was a hot, muggy, summer day; the low-tide smell of the mud flats was more brinish and morbid than usual. Owen Meany told me that my father would know that my mother was dead, and that-when I was old enough-he would identify himself to me.
'If he's alive,' I said, still throwing rocks. 'If he's alive and if he cares that he's my father-if he even knows he's my father.'
And although I didn't believe him that day, that was the day Owen Meany began his lengthy contribution to my belief in God. Owen was throwing smaller and smaller rocks, but he still couldn't reach the water; there was a certain small satisfaction to the sound the rocks made when they struck the mud flats, but the water was more satisfying than the mud in every way. And almost casually, with a confidence that stood in surprising and unreasonable juxtaposition to his tiny size, Owen Meany told me that he was sure my father was alive, that he was sure my father knew he was my father, and that God knew who my father was; even if my father never came forth to identify himself, Owen told me, Go* would identify him for me. 'YOUR DAD CAN HIDE FROwi YOU,' Owen said, 'BUT HE CAN'T HIDE FROM GOD.'
And with that announcement, Owen Meany grunted as he released a stone that reached the water. We were both surprised; it was the last rock either of us threw that day, and we stood watching the circle of ripples extending from the point of entry until even the gulls were assured we had stopped our disturbance of their universe, and they returned to our side of the Squamscott. For years, there was a most successful salmon fishery on our river; no salmon would be caught dead there now-actually, the only salmon you could find in the Squamscott today would be a dead one. Ale wives were also plentiful back then-and still were plentiful when I was a boy, and Owen Meany and I used to catch them. Gravesend is only nine miles from the ocean. Although the Squamscott was never the Thames, the big oceangoing ships once made their way to Gravesend on the Squamscott; the channel has since become so obstructed by rocks and shoals that no boat requiring any great draft of water could navigate it. And although Captain John Smith's beloved Pocahontas ended her unhappy life on British soil in the parish churchyard of the original Gravesend, the spiritually armless Watahantowet was never buried in our Gravesend. The only sagamore to be given official burial in our town was Mr. Fish's black Labrador retriever, run over by a diaper truck on Front Street and buried-with the solemn attendance of some neighborhood children-in my grandmother's rose garden. For more than a century, the big business of Gravesend was lumber, which was the first big business of New Hampshire. Although New Hampshire is called the Granite State, granite- building granite, curbstone granite, tombstone granite-came after lumber; it was never the booming business that lumber was. You can be sure that when all the trees are gone, there will still be rocks around; but in the case of granite, most of it remains underground. My uncle
