"Eddings, David - Regina's Song V2.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eddings David)

didn't understand
what they were saying.
As their official surrogate brother, I spent a lot of my
childhood and early
adolescence in the company of the Twinkie Twins, and
I learned to ignore
their cutesy-poo habit of whispering to each other,
casting sly looks at me,
and giggling. By the time I moved up into high-school-
an event most
adolescents view as something akin to a religious
experience-I was more
or less immune to their antics.
In May of my sophomore year, I turned sixteen and got
my driver's license.
My dad firmly advised me that the family car was not
available, but he
promised to check at the union hall for job
opportunities for young fellows
in need of a summer job. I wasn't too hopeful, but he
came home with an
evil sort of grin on his face. "You've got a job at a
sawmill, Mark," he told me.
"No kidding?" I was a little startled.
"Nope. You go to work on the Monday after school lets
out.”
“What am I going to be doing?"
"Pulling chain."
"What's ‘pulling chain’?"
"You don't really want to know."
I found out why I wouldn't after I'd joined the union and
reported to work.
I also found out why there were always job openings in
sawmills when the
job involves the green chain. Sawmills convert logs
from the woods into
planks. After a green hemlock log has spent six or
eight weeks in the
millpond soaking up salt water, it gets very heavy, and
it's so water-logged
that it sends out a spray when it goes through the saw.
The planks come
slithering out of the mill on a wide bed of rollers called
the green chain.
They're rough, covered with splinters, and almost as
heavy as iron. "Pulling
chain" involves hauling those rough-sawed planks off
the rollers and
stacking them in piles. It's a moderately un-fun job.
More-modern sawmills