It never lasts. I guess I don’t look the part. Charon, you’ll remember, was the somber ferryman who steered the boat across the River Styx, taking the departed souls over to the Other Side. He’s usually pictured as a grim, taciturn character, tall and gaunt. I get called Charon, but that’s not what I look like. I’m not exactly taciturn, and I don’t go around in a flapping black cloak. I’m too fat. Maybe too old, too. It’s a shrewd gag, though, calling me Charon. I do pass human souls Out, and for nearly half of them, the stars are indeed the Styx—they will never return. I have two things I know Charon had. One is that bitter difference from the souls I deal with. They have lost only one world; the other is before them. But I’m rejected by both. The other thing has to do with a little-known fragment of the Charon legend. And that, I think, is worth a yarn. It’s Judson’s yarn, and I wish he was here to tell it himself—which is foolish; the yarn’s about why he isn’t here.
