COLANDERS AND THE KALLIKANTZAROI

by James Zahardis

A heron perched in a mangrove tree glanced at the old pickup. Its tires crushed the shells lining the driveway leading to the back of a coral-pink house.

An unshaven man in shorts and a sleeveless River Monsters tee-shirt hopped out of the truck and grabbed a fishing rod from its bed. He looked at the soupy water of the Florida Intracoastal Waterway that snaked across the length of the backyard and shouted, "Come on, Johnny! Get your butt in gear, man! Tides comin' in! Porgies and drum are comin' in!"

Johnny cracked open the ratty screen door and looked out. He appeared threadbare and wan.

"What's up, Tim?"

"Hard night?" Tim replied.

"Nights."

Johnny slung open the screen door, banging it into a rusty colander leaning against the side of the house.

"Oh! Not that bullshit with the spaghetti strainer again!"

"Yep. Got another one by the front door too."

Tim teasingly shook his head. "Whatever. Let's fish. I didn't forget the bait if you didn't forget the beer."

***

The friends sat on fraying five-and-dime lawn chairs by the barnacle-encrusted seawall. Tim looked down at the human-like teeth of an undersized porgy he was unhooking and turned toward the heron walking across the lawn, eying the fish.

"Catch and release or give this one to Old Petey?"

"Let it go. That pain-in-the-ass mooch needs to catch ‘em on its own."

"Dude, you're such a drag. Every year, same old shit after Christmas — what is it with you?"

"I think about Yaya — Grandma — this time of the year. She passed away three days after Christmas when I was a kid…heart attack," Johnny replied.

"Oh, my bad."

There was silence, silence broken by the raucous cry of a soaring gull.

"Back when I was eight, we went to see Yaya in Icaria."

"Where's that?"

"It's a remote Greek island. She had a little whitewash house near an olive grove overlooking the Aegean. You could smell the salt when the wind blew. Salt and olives."

"Cool."

"She was a great cook: goat, stuffed grape leaves, killer avgolemono soup."

"So you put out spaghetti strainers to remember her cooking?"

The sky darkened, as a slate-hued cloud scudded overhead, laden with water and lightning.

"No, it's not that," Johnny said. Tendrils of the dark cloud extended earthward, accentuating the shadows on his face. "Yaya put colanders by the outside doors from Christmas to Epiphany. She believed that it prevented the Kallikantzaroi — "

" — Cowlick-Can't-Zowie-What?"