Borealis Walton

Borealis Walton is Bernard Walton's grandfather and the stubborn keeper of a fifty year feud with the Meltsner family. He believes Eugene's grandfather Hiram cheated him in a livestock deal, delivering only twenty seven of 2,025 promised pigs and causing the loss of his farm. Borealis orders Eugene away from a Walton reunion and refuses every attempt at reconciliation. Old records eventually reveal that Hiram's lisp turned "two sows and twenty five pigs" into the larger sounding number, and the shipment was correct. Even clear paperwork cannot overcome Borealis's resentment; he calls it another Meltsner trick and throws everyone out. Proud and wounded, he has repeated the grievance so long that preserving it matters more to him than discovering the truth.