Matlacha: Florida Man and the Window on the Water

A Gulf fable · Matlacha.

Florida Man had promised Marla a ride home, and so far he had kept the passenger seat clear of everything except a towel and one socket he couldn't identify.

At the private landing in Matlacha, he stood beside Val with Marla's spare life vest over his arm. He had borrowed it on Sunday. Returning it on Thursday was, by his standards, practically a ceremony.

Marla kept her little cabin sailboat at a mooring beyond the mangrove point. Usually they heard her tender before they saw it: a small, determined engine bringing her out of the dark. Tonight the channel lay quiet. A porch light across the water drew a trembling yellow stitch toward the landing.

Then a window arrived.

It came upright, sliding sideways toward the pilings, with neither wall nor boat attached. Its pale frame stood above the black water. Beyond its edges lay the ordinary channel. Inside the open rectangle, a cabin lamp shone on a striped cushion.

Florida Man took one step back. Val caught his sleeve, although she had stepped back too.

The window stopped beside the landing.

Marla sat below the cushion, against the opposite side of the cabin. Her gray hair had come loose from its clip. Water gleamed across the floor beneath her shoes.

"Well," she said, looking up at them. "You found a way."

"We didn't," Florida Man said.

He knew her face, her voice, the crooked collar of the shirt she always called her good boat shirt. He also knew that behind this window there ought to have been enough channel to drown a truck.

"Where are you?"

"My mooring. The one inside the point. Bow toward the leaning palm."

Val already had her phone out.

"What happened?" he asked.

Marla looked at the wet floor, then back at him.

"Touched bottom coming in. I got here and tied up. Motor's off. Found water coming in, went down to see how much, and missed that last step. Now this leg won't take me."

She lifted one hand from her knee. Her fingers shook.

"Radio's on the cockpit seat. Might as well be in Fort Myers."

He could see the way aft: a narrow aisle, three short steps, an open companionway with night beyond it. No door blocked her. The distance was small enough to make her predicament seem especially unkind.

"Owen's out checking his boat," Val said into the phone. "He knows yours."

Florida Man laid the spare vest through the opening onto the striped berth. He kept his feet on the landing and watched Marla reach up for it. The cushion dipped under her hand. She pulled the vest down, got her arms into it, and frowned at a twisted strap.

"Sunday you had it inside out," she told him.

"That's why I brought it back for service."

Her small laugh ended in a breath she had to steady.

Val turned the phone so they could both hear Owen. He was already afloat, close to the point. He repeated the mooring's position and said he was coming alongside Marla's cockpit. Val gave him the landing for their return.

Florida Man looked down at Marla. The water covered the edges of a magazine lying on the floor. A corner of its bright cover lifted and settled.

"Can you get onto the berth?" he asked.

She considered it, then shook her head. "Not over that edge."

From the landing, his reach ended well above her shoulder. Getting her through the window meant raising her onto the berth, then over a sill higher still. The steps behind her had a handhold and somewhere to put her good foot.

He took his own vest from the bench and fastened it.

Val watched him. "You're coming back with Owen."

"Yes."

He handed her his truck keys. She closed her fist around them, making the ordinary arrangement solid.

Marla shifted her good foot out of the aisle. "Berth's dry. Nothing under that cushion but blankets."

Florida Man bent through the opening. The cabin smelled of damp canvas and the peppermint sweets she kept in a tin. He set one knee on the cushion while his other foot still rested on the landing. The berth held him. He brought the other knee across, turned carefully, and lowered his feet to the cabin floor.

Cold water ran into his shoes.

He stood beside Marla, with Val looking in from the window at his shoulder. Beyond the companionway he could hear real water against a real hull. He had expected some feeling to announce that he had done an impossible thing. Mostly he felt the wet hems of his trousers.

"Which side?" he asked.

Marla showed him. She could pull with both arms; one leg would hold her if she didn't hurry. He crouched beside her, and she settled an arm across his shoulders.

They rose together. Halfway up she stopped, her breath held, and he stopped too. There was no reason to make the next movement until she was ready for it.

When she stood, she looked toward the companionway.

"That used to be three steps," she said.

"Still is."

"Looks like the courthouse."

He had once carried a box of papers up those courthouse stairs. He remembered resenting every public dollar that hadn't gone toward an elevator.

Marla made the first short distance along the aisle with her hand against the berth edge. Florida Man moved beside her, taking the weight she needed him to take. At the steps she reached the fixed handhold and stood a moment looking up into the cockpit.

An engine sounded beyond the hull.

"Owen?" she called.

"Here. Take your time."

Florida Man glanced back. Val stood beyond the open frame, phone at her ear, his keys bright between her fingers. He could still climb out that way. Marla couldn't. He turned toward her again.

She put her good foot on the first tread. He stayed below her, his shoulder under her arm, leaving her room to use the handhold. The cabin lamp caught the white strain around her mouth.

"Wait," she said.

He waited.

The hull moved beneath them, a small roll that sent the wet magazine sliding softly against a cupboard. His free hand tightened on the wood beside the steps. Marla held where she was. The boat settled again.

He felt her arm begin to pull, then ease.

"Not yet," she said.

"All right."

He could bear her weight. The harder thing was resisting the urge to finish for her: one strong heave, one bad guess about what hurt. He kept his shoulder steady. Above them Owen's light moved away from her eyes and rested on the cockpit floor.

Marla took a breath and moved.

This time her foot found the next tread. Her hand advanced along the wood. Florida Man came up behind and below her, carrying his share of the effort. One more small rise brought her shoulders into the night air.

Owen leaned in from the cockpit and offered his arm. Marla took it herself.

Then she was sitting outside, with the cabin beneath her instead of around her. Florida Man climbed the last step and sat down hard on the opposite seat. He had not noticed how much he wanted to sit until sitting became possible.

Owen's boat lay alongside, held where he wanted it. They made the transfer without an audience beyond each other. Marla told them when to stop, and when she was ready. By the time she sat aboard, her boat's little lamp looked distant through the companionway, although it was only a few feet away.

"Leave the boat," she said when Owen glanced toward it. "I'm going."

He nodded. Arrangements for the damaged hull could wait until there were enough hands for them. He carried her away from the mooring and round the point.

Florida Man sat facing her on the short ride. Mangroves passed in a black, close wall. No window hung in them. He did not turn every patch of water into a place to search for one.

Val waited at the landing with his truck pulled close. Between them they got Marla into the passenger seat. She sat with both hands flat on the towel, looking through the windshield as if the shape of an ordinary road deserved her full attention.

Val passed over the keys. "I'll come behind you. They know you're on your way."

Marla nodded. She had agreed to go straight in and have the leg seen to. Her hair clip lay on the towel; she picked it up and put it in her pocket.

Florida Man reached for the stray socket, then remembered to take it off the seat before it rolled beneath her. Marla watched him put it in the cup holder.

"You can give me that ride now," she said.

He drew the towel over her wet knees. Then he closed her door and went round to drive.

The real waters of Matlacha Pass

Matlacha Pass separates Pine Island and Little Pine Island from the Cape Coral side of southwest Florida. The state aquatic-preserve program describes it as a tidal connection between Charlotte Harbor to the north and the Caloosahatchee River and San Carlos Bay to the south. The preserve was established in 1972 and encompasses 14,600 acres.

Its shallow, tannin-stained waters run through a mixture of seagrass flats, oyster bars and mangrove islands. The mangrove shorelines and islands provide nesting habitat for wading and diving birds, while the submerged habitats support the pass's estuarine life. Bokeelia, Matlacha and Cape Coral are among the surrounding communities named in the official overview. The official overview provides the geographic and ecological background for this stretch of working coastal water.