"Oh, Gesundheit, Riley," said Zip, "but last time you told that one, it was strange voices and so forth—"
* * * * * * * * * *
"Gesundheit"
In just the last couple days, I said this to the Non-Certified Spouse and then I asked her what it literally means, being that she's fluent in German. I was all, "What's 'gesund' mean?" And she was all, "Healthy." And I was all, "What does 'heit' mean?" And she was all, "Technical words and grammar stuff that I don't remember exactly." (That wasn't her quote but my memory's memory of her quote!) But basically it's like saying, "Oh shit, you're dying! Maybe I can ward off death by saying some magical words of healthiness! If you don't die in the next week, I saved your life!"
"last time you told that one"
Okay, maybe that story wasn't so recent. Or maybe Darby and Chick's camp isn't the first camp they stopped at. Or maybe they've been in this field outside Chicago for a few days. I don't need to be this accurate on the Bindlestiff's timeline! It's not like I'm solving a murder and I need to pinpoint their location across the previous weeks to rule them out as the killers.
"it was strange voices and so forth"
"Sky-stories" like "sea-stories" can often be full of hyperbole and superstition. They're just tall tales to make their adventures seem more exciting. Unless . . . maybe Riley did hear voices and, as he gets further away from the story, he's begun to convince himself that he couldn't have heard voices and thinking he did was nonsense and so he dropped that part of the story. Maybe they were up so high in the atmosphere that Riley could hear the voices of angels or the thoughts of the dead? Remember that part in Gravity's Rainbow where Slothrop begins to pick up on deceased Roland Feldspath's thoughts and how Roland seemed to be trapped somewhere in the atmosphere above the Casino Hermann Goering? And what about the angel over Lübeck? Plenty of various reasons for Riley to have heard voices way up in the sky. Also, he was freezing to death so his mind might have been going a little schizophrenic from the trauma of hypothermia.
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