Read Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy for Free Online

got to come down."

    The gulls glided back around, all together, all yawing their wings to the drafts that brought them low to the water. Then they straightened and flew over the ledges on the far shore, out of sight.
    "They in somebody's way?"
    "They've got to come down and you've got to move on."
    "By this fall," added one of the frock coats. Deacon Hurd.
    "I see," said Reverend Griffin, nodding. Lizzie watched him for The Change, but she didn't see any signs of it. "And by this fall. I see." He thought some and tilted his head at Sheriff Elwell. "Someone worried about his chickens? Someone missing his traps?"
    "It's our tax money," said Deacon Hurd. "If a single one of you comes onto the pauper rolls, where do you think the money to keep you will come from? It will come from the people of Phippsburg."
    "We're awful glad to hear that the people of Phippsburg will care for us in our time of trouble. But Sheriff, when was the last time Phippsburg sent their taxes our way?"
    "The schoolhouse," pointed out another frock coat. "And the teacher's salary to go with it."
    "I guess," said Lizzie's grandfather slowly, "I guess I thought that every town in the state of Maine took care to find a teacher for its own."
    "Exactly the issue," said the tallest of the frock coats, twirling the rings on his fingers. "Are you our own?"
    "Times move on, Preacher," said Sheriff Elwell. "And sometimes when times move on, folks have to move on with them. You'll find some other place to squat. Lord knows it won't take long to build another shack like this one."

    Lizzie put her arms around her grandfather, and he stroked her hands. "Lord knows it wouldn't," he said. "But we've got our own place here already."
    "No, you don't have your own place here," said Sheriff Elwell. "There's not one of you that's got a registered deed to the land on this island. I've been to the town clerk about it. Not a single one of you owns any land on the island."
    Lizzie felt The Change begin.
    "My granddaddy built that house there, my daddy built the fence around it," said Reverend Griffin. "They worked like dogs tending your granddaddies' and daddies' places in Phippsburg so they could pay right for every nail. There's no one here lives on a piece of land like that, father and mother after father and mother, that doesn't own it."
    The tall frock coat put his hands in the side pockets of his vest. "Your grandfather saw fit to build this house on land that did not belong to him—that does not belong to you now. The sheriff is trying to explain the consequences of that."
    Reverend Griffin looked at Sheriff Elwell, who shrugged. "The law's the law. You got no deed that says you own this place."
    "Then who does own this place?"
    "The state of Maine," said Sheriff Elwell.
    "And does the state of Maine have a mind to settle right here?"
    Sheriff Elwell shrugged again. "The state of Maine does what the state of Maine wants to do."
    A long pause. Lizzie waited for the gulls to return over the high ledge, but they didn't. Maybe they'd gone across to the Kennebec and were swooping down on more Zerubabels. She felt the movement of the day and knew that the tide would be running in soon, covering the Zerubabels. Covering the clams, too, and she hadn't dug hers yet. Now she probably wouldn't.

    "Sheriff," her grandfather said slowly, "you've taken the trouble to come out here to tell us this."
    "You'll let the others know, Preacher? They'll need to be out come fall."
    "Before I do that, I wonder if all you might take a walk with me." Silence. "A little ways in."
    He did not wait for an answer but turned, Lizzie with him and still waiting for The Change to drop his voice. He set out on a path that threaded through knots of pines, looking into them and nodding now and again. The path was clear enough that even the frock coats were able to keep up pretty well, though Lizzie doubted that they heard the sounds of those who had come off their doorsteps and now walked silently beside