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Chapter V: His burdens
What the news would say in the morning every day. Everything that would be talked about on the open road out loud. What his family had seen of it: divorces, deaths, and everything that strangers drowned in brown whiskey around 3 am. Tom hadn’t heard much more than this about the world. He’d hardly seen more of it than what was visible from right where he was at, and none of what he had seen had ever made him want to discover any more.
To be honest, the world sounded terrible. Maybe even worse than hell. At least, by the time you go there, you're already dead.
‘It's a pile of shit, this world,’ his father used to tell him when he was growing up, and his mother would only nod. ‘A stinking swamp, and if you're not careful it will swallow a baby like you in one piece.’
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