Steinhatchee: Florida Man and the Tracks Behind the Boat Shed

A Gulf fable · Steinhatchee

Nori's tortoise had been missing for forty minutes when something moved the canoe behind her boat shed.

Florida Man heard the wheels first: a short complaint in the sand, followed by the hollow knock of a hull against its trolley. The shed was locked. The river lay beyond it, black between the porch lights of Steinhatchee and the smaller lights across at Jena.

Nori stood beside him holding a photograph on her phone.

“That's him,” she said.

In the picture, Commodore occupied most of a shallow wooden box. His forelegs looked as though somebody had fitted him with spare elbows. Behind him, Nori's bare foot provided an unhelpful impression of scale.

“I know Commodore,” Florida Man said. “We have met socially.”

“Then you know he doesn't answer to his name.”

“I've met people socially who don't either.”

She lowered the phone. Her thumb stayed pressed against its darkening screen.

He had come to help her search, bringing a flashlight and the gloves he habitually brought to problems that might turn out to involve lumber. Nori had kept the big sulcata for twelve years. That afternoon she had watched him settle beneath his shelter, latched the enclosure, and gone inside to shower. When she came out, a hinge had torn loose from its post. The latch still held its two pieces together, conscientiously, in the wrong place.

Her son Eliam had arrived while she was checking beneath the porch. Now he came round the shed carrying a smaller light and a very large landing net.

“Leave that,” Nori said.

“It was the largest thing I could find.”

“Find something with less opinion.”

Eliam leaned the net against the wall. Florida Man pointed toward the broad yard gate, open beside the gravel drive.

“Let's shut that before we go chasing sounds.”

The gate belonged to Nori's neighbor, who stored two skiffs on the adjoining strip of sand. Nori phoned him; he told her where its drop bolt sat. Eliam closed it while Florida Man walked the fence with his light. The wire met the ground. The little opening between the two yards remained inside the fence. Beyond the gate, a truck passed, its tires hissing briefly on the road.

Florida Man tested the bolt once and came back.

“He's on this side if he hasn't already left.”

Nori looked toward the gate.

“If,” she said.

They began at the broken enclosure. A pale scrape crossed the damp sand where the loose corner had dragged. Beyond it, the ground held a confusion of shoe soles, wheel marks and little pits. Florida Man kept his light low. He could make every shallow hollow look enormous by putting the beam behind it. This seemed an unnecessary contribution to the evening.

Eliam had already reached the narrow way beside the shed.

“I can move these boats.”

“First let me see under them,” Nori said.

He stopped with both hands on a skiff's gunwale.

Florida Man crouched at the enclosure's outer corner. Four blunt marks lay beside a swept patch of sand. Farther along, another set showed beneath the print of his own shoe.

“I've walked over him,” he said.

“You haven't walked over him.”

“His route. My evening's improving by degrees.”

Nori knelt beside the marks. She followed them with her light through the opening into the storage yard. Here the sand was dry and pale. Something had pushed aside a little ridge left by a wheel, leaving a broad, uneven trough toward the boats.

The canoe knocked again.

All three lights went toward it.

It rested upside down on a small wheeled trolley, its long dark hull occupying the lane between two skiffs. The near end shifted an inch. No wind moved the loose cord hanging from its handle.

Eliam took a step.

Nori caught his sleeve, lightly.

“Not until we know where he is.”

Florida Man lowered his beam beneath the canoe. A wheel, a crosspiece, the pale scrap of a paint rag. Nothing that he could immediately call Commodore.

Then the paint rag moved.

It was the front edge of a shell, pale beneath a smudge of shed dust. A thick foreleg stood behind the trolley's near wheel. Above it, the rest of the animal disappeared into the low dark space beneath the hull.

Florida Man stayed on his heels.

“Found a passenger.”

Nori let go of Eliam and came down beside him. She looked for several seconds before she spoke.

“Commodore.”

The tortoise extended his head. His dark eye considered the light, then Nori, without suggesting that either had arrived promptly.

She touched the back of Florida Man's hand.

“There he is.”

The words came out much smaller than the search had been.

Eliam leaned forward, smiling now. “We can get the canoe off.”

“Leave it,” Nori said. “He's got room. He's sheltering.”

Florida Man moved his light along the frame. The shell cleared it. The animal was not caught, but his attempted turn had put his shoulder against the near wheel. Each forward push rolled the trolley a little, taking the canoe's shelter along with him. A skiff stood close on his other side. Beyond its bow, the lane narrowed toward a fence panel.

They could not leave him to keep moving his accommodations through the yard.

Nori stood. “My box is by the back steps.”

Eliam started toward the house.

“Both handles,” she called. “And the sliding door stays open.”

Florida Man set down his flashlight where its beam lit the sand beyond the wheel. He took hold of the trolley's dry handle. Commodore pressed forward, and the wheel tried to turn beneath his hand.

He held it still without pulling the frame against the shell.

“Your room's being prepared,” he told the tortoise.

Commodore tucked his head back beneath the canoe.

“Complaint received.”

The box arrived between Nori and Eliam. It was broad, low and covered, with a short entrance at one end. Florida Man remembered helping her carry it to her car for a previous veterinary visit. A worn patch on its rim bore the marks of several negotiations he had not attended.

Nori put it down outside the clear side of the trolley. Then she looked at the gap between its entrance and the tortoise.

“Too sharp a turn.”

Eliam shifted his end. She shifted hers. They set the entrance farther along the lane, making room around the wheel. Nori checked the sand in front of it with her palm, removing a little bent boat fitting. She put that in her pocket rather than toss it somewhere new.

Florida Man's fingers began to ache around the handle. He changed hands. The trolley creaked. Commodore emerged far enough to reconsider the wheel.

“Can you take it back?” Nori asked. “Just away from that side.”

He watched the shell while he eased the trolley rearward. The wheel drew clear of the foreleg. The canoe moved with it, revealing the narrow opening toward the box.

Commodore stopped.

Florida Man stopped too.

Nori settled beside the box, well out of that opening. Eliam waited behind its raised door. Nobody called, reached beneath the animal or improved the situation with a net.

A boat engine sounded on the river. It grew louder, then faded around the bend. Commodore put one forefoot into the open lane.

Florida Man held the trolley where it was.

The tortoise turned, slowly enough for every person in the yard to have an idea and keep it. His shell passed clear of the wheel. He took another step, then another, and disappeared headfirst into the familiar box.

His back feet remained outside.

Eliam looked at Nori. She kept her hand raised.

At last the last foot vanished. She lowered her hand, and Eliam slid the door home.

Nori checked it herself. Then she sat in the sand.

Florida Man rolled the canoe back to its place and sat beside her. Eliam brought the photograph up on her phone again, held it beside the occupied box, and nodded.

“Same fellow.”

“Very thorough,” she said.

They carried Commodore indoors together. Nori left a message for his usual reptile veterinarian about the excursion. The damaged enclosure would stay empty until its repair was finished; the box already had its accustomed secure place for the night.

Florida Man went back for his flashlight and the landing net. The net had collected one paint rag. He shook it free, hung the net inside the shed, and went in to find Nori telling Commodore exactly how much trouble he had caused.

Commodore had begun eating before she reached the middle.

The Steinhatchee River and Florida’s tortoises

The Steinhatchee River reaches the Gulf between Steinhatchee and Jena, along Florida's Big Bend. It also divides Taylor and Dixie counties. The regional tourism council describes a blackwater river that broadens toward the coast, with a limestone ledge forming Steinhatchee Falls upstream. That change from wooded river to open coastal water helps shape the setting of this tale.

Florida's native gopher tortoise and the sulcata belong to different stories of place. FWC identifies the sulcata as a non-native tortoise familiar in the pet trade and distinguishes it from the gopher tortoise by features including its forearm spurs and shell shape. A University of Florida veterinary account also describes the care and eventual adoption of a stray sulcata. For the native gopher tortoise, well-drained sand and low vegetation are important habitat features. The distinction is ecological as well as a matter of shape: a coastal town can be home to land animals without making them creatures of the river.