He started the wall before my father was born.

“To keep the bad out and the good in,” Granddad would say as we gazed at the horizon from our creaky rocking chairs. His life story set stone by stone, every nook and cranny holding familiar yet startlingly new tales.

It began, the feud, when he was still swaddled in cloths as an infant. The neighbours had stolen a prized milking cow from his father. The entire county was in an uproar for nearly a month, he swears. Things never settled too well after that between the families.

As he grew older and the neighbours children with him, schoolyard taunts turned into midnight mayhem. They would slink across the yard back and forth, knocking over horse troughs or slaughtering pigs. It continued for years and years, the sheriff stopped bothering to interfere after the umpteenth call.

“And then,” he leans into me, his voice carrying a conspiring quality, “I thought, maybe if I built me a wall out of the stones from the field, none of them no-good cow stealers and pig killers could get in and take what’s ours.”

He would sit next to my bed at night, near to tucking me in after a hard days work under the sun, and I’d know. He’d done a lot in his life as a humble farmer, but nothing made him prouder than to retell the story of the wall.

Granddads eyes would soften as I whispered, “Grandy, would you tell me again? About the wall?” His lips would quirk into an unending smile at the mention of the crumbling rocks piled in the yard.

“I would lift each rock, my shoulders aching from my day of ploughing or haying. But I knew I couldn’t leave it half done – there would be no purpose, and I’d be made the fool! So after dusk, when the children were all set to bed, I’d take my lantern to the field. I’d take them rocks and pile them as high as I could toward the sky. It’s still taller than you! I didn’t ever think I’d finish,” he’d sigh wistfully. “I did though.”

“When?” I’d ask, enveloped in the soft, low tones of his voice, the sun-warm chords more comforting than my blankets. I never wanted him to end the story.

“The day your mama had you I put the last stone down. I picked up my lantern and headed back to my little house, hearing the cries of childbirth dim and stop. I knew that I’d done my job, you see. That you’d never have to sneak through the fields to pull some prank that would only come back to you tenfold.”

His withered hands would smooth my face and finally tuck me in. Droopy eyed I’d smile tiredly and kiss his cheek.

I carry around a piece of the wall now, as I go about my days. A small smooth stone kept warm in my pocket. This was his great wall of China, his purpose in life, his hobby, pastime. In comparison it was small and meager, such a tiny effort for the same purpose – “To keep the bad out and the good in.”