Shack on Fire (Short Story‪)‬

On Harkers Island some still know the Shackleford land grab as "the takings." Which sounds down home but is really lawyer talk. When the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment was added to the Constitution it was supposed to keep the government from grabbing private property just because it can. But in December 1986, on the North Carolina coast, the government could, and it did. "George Washington and Ben Franklin, they went to war over this. So what are we going to do, boys? Sit still and let them have our fish camp?" That's how Wash Willis put it to his cousins, Kirby and Al, as he planned the sneak attack that would make sure no government would claim the house they had built together on Shackleford Banks.