“Think of me being in the same world with ’em all these years and not knowing a thing about ’em when there’s so much to know, and under my skin stark crazy to learn it, only I didn’t know I even wanted to know what I really want to know more than anything else, until I had to get dumped down here to find it out! I get the funniest sort of a feeling, parson, that all along there’s been a Me tucked away inside my hide that’s been loving these things ever since I was born. Not just to catch and handle ’em, and stretch out their little wings, and remember the names some bughouse high-brow wished on ’em, though all that’s in the feeling, too; it’s something else, if I could make you understand what I mean.”
I laughed. “I think I do understand,” said I. “I have a Me like that tucked away in mine, too, you know.”
He looked at me gravely. “Parson,” said he, earnestly, “there’s times I wish you had a dozen kids, and every one of ’em twins! It’s a shame to think of some poor orphans swindled out of such a daddy as you’d have made!”
“Why,” said I, smiling, “You are one of my twins.”
“Me?” He reflected. “Maybe half of me might be, parson,” he agreed, “but it’s not safe for a skypilot to be caught owning a twin like the other half.”
“I’m pinning my faith to my half,” said I, serenely.
“Now, why?” he asked, with sudden fierceness. “I turn it over and over and over: it looks white on the outside, but I can’t to save me figure out why you’re doing it. Parson, what have you got up your sleeve?”
“Nothing but my arm. What should you think?”
“I don’t know what to think, and that’s the straight of it. What’s your game, anyhow? What in the name of God are you after?”
“Why, I think,” said I, “that in the name of God I’m after—that other You that’s been tucked away all these years, and couldn’t get born until a Me inside mine, just like himself, called him to come out and be alive.”
He pondered this in silence. Then:
“I’ll take your word for it,” said he. “Though if anybody’d ever told me I’d be eating out of a parson’s hand, I’d have pushed his face in for him. Yep, I’m Fido! Me!”
“At least you growl enough,” said I, tartly.
He eyed me askance.
“Have I got to lick hands?” he snarled.
I walked away, without a reply; through my shoulder-blades I could feel him glaring after me. He followed, hobbling:
“Parson!”
“Well?”
“If I’m not the sort that licks hands I’m not the sort that bites ’em, neither. I’ll tell you—it’s this way: I—sort of get to chewing on that infernal log of wood that’s where my good leg used to grow and—and splinters get into my temper—and I’ve got to snarl or burst wide open! You’d growl like the devil yourself, if you had to try holding down my job for awhile, skypilot or no skypilot!”