This time the rowboat wasn't some vague metaphor. My rowboat episode was explicit, not that dark old imagery where you need to have read Dante and you need to have memorized scenes by Ingmar Bergman in order to get what's going on.

I went down to the pier and checked my luggage. The gate attendant pitched it into an incinerator that seemed a thousand feed deep before telling me to have a nice trip.

The boatman stood by the boat looking impatient until he saw me get close enough, then he smiled broadly through the whiskers piercing downward from his 19th century facial style hair.

"Welcome aboard! I'm Charon and I'll be your pilot."

I smiled politely and stepped carefully down into the rowboat while he offered me a hand. I sat on the plank bench nearest the stern and let the facade slip. The look of worry of Hades and all the underworld covered my lips for a matter of seconds before I reinstalled my greeting expression.

"Pretzels or nuts?"

"Neither, thank-you."

"A drink then?"

"Just water please."

Charon dipped a plastic cup over the gunwhale and filled it three quarters full before handing it to me. As he extended his arm and stopped it in front of me, a swirl of liquid lashed out the top of the cup and landed beside my foot.

I was stunned but his sincere and conscientious grin convinced me. I took it without breaking eye contact, and he held a jovial gaze with a half smile through his Marlborough Man moustache while staring me down, daring me with his eyes to refuse the cup.

I put the cup to my mouth and tipped it back, drinking gulp by gulp as I held him with one eye. Liquid trickled down both corners of my mouth and I threw the cup down, waiting to see if it was poison or not.

Charon chortled. "Ha! You want another? There's plenty more!" Charon thinks he's hilarious and laughs, gesturing to the river Styx.

He was serious. He waited for me to answer. "No, thanks."

"Right then!" Charon leaned down and let loose the boat from the dock, like he had done it a thousand times before. Maybe a million. Maybe more. Many more.

Charon rowed with two strong arms that seemed to hug a smoker's cough, wet to the core. As he pulled on the oars, his face grew larger, and a cigarette appeared that I'm sure I did not see him light, but there it was, dangling on his lip. Smoothly, between strokes, he had the cigarette between his first two fingers and drew a breath in so large it seemed to suck air from the riverbanks, too far away for me to see.

With fresh smoke in his lungs, he pulled harder and his chest grew larger, his face and neck leaner. The sweat of his brow was a glisten and no longer a dripping concern. I'm sure I did not see him bring out any new tobacco but he had a cigar the size of my finger gently held in his teeth, smoke drifting gently as he pulled the oars.

Charon made another joke. "Sorry, the non-smoking seats were all gone." He roared with laughter and drew hard on the cigar. I felt like we were speeding across the water at breakneck speed. So fast that if I stuck my hand outside the rowboat it might break. Between strokes his hand went swift to his coat pocket and pulled a cigar, which he offered me.

I don't remember taking it, but I was sitting with a cigar in my hand. One of those ones that looks hand-rolled. One like Winston Churchill would have, a big one like that. He had trimmed the end for me and put a match in my hand, which was burning without getting shorter. I looked at it hard for a long time, waiting to find out if I would hear God's voice from the flame just like Moses did.

I lit the cigar, holding the unconsumable match up with several short draws of air through the leaves. I'm not a smoker but the coating of smoke was like a blessing sealing me from the inside. Against what, I could not say.

Blips of white passed us by on each side from time to time. I realized after a while these were icebergs. Massive ones, towering over us as we went. The fact that I could barely see them revealed to me that our speed was even faster than I thought. Even at a hundred miles per hour they wouldn't disappear so fast. We were going ten times that fast. If we were moving at all. There was no wind in my hair, but I could clearly see the wake of wind we were leaving as we went.

I wasn't cold but I could tell the air was cold, and the icebergs were a strong clue. The river was hot as Styx. Charon grinned, and his tobacco grew the more he smoked it. He pulled at the oars as if he were reeling in pleasure with every stroke.

The boat came to a sudden stop and I heard it swish onto solid ground. The bow was behind Charon's back and I did not see what was coming. We had landed on a solid shore of snow. Our speed launched us up the bank, which was steep for the first hundred feet or more. We slid up it and crested the hill, landing at a comfortable stop in a crusty snow. I could see that only a few yards away was bare earth.

Charon started tying the boat off onto a pier that seemed awfully out of place here but quite obviously served the right purpose. He didn't actually tie a knot though, he just wrapped the line twice and looked at me.

I looked about, then realized that I had no belongings to take, so I simply stood up. My legs were rubberly doing their job and I nearly fell out of the boat into the snow. I carefully set my feet out on the snow and walked slowly toward the dry spot. Charon began to loosen the line, readying to leave.

Of course I would be left here. That should have been obvious to start with. Charon is not a spirit guide, only a boatman.