John and Mary

By Robert Fedorchek

It’s a mother and a father who have lost their two sons.
It’s a sister who has lost her two brothers.
It’s loss and devastation.
Acute pain—made more palpable on a day of worldwide, historical significance—brings to the fore the emotional wedge driven between a husband and a wife. And since the reason has them at loggerheads and creates such a strain in their marriage, they openly drift apart. John, the husband, at bottom a good man, finds release with another woman, a wholly unexpected encounter which he will rationalize to convince himself it is a chance occurrence; Mary, the wife, at bottom a good woman, turns to faith in the person of a Catholic priest, a priest who doubts his ability to guide her. He will, though, through prayer and steadfast support, get her to engage in search of self and see the futility of blame.
Ultimately, a willingness to admit fault and to forgive will come into play. It must: a critical event will demand no less.
But as they grapple with their needs as husband and wife, Doro, their thirteen-year-old daughter, finds herself left adrift ... until John, first, brings her into his embrace, and Mary, second, enfolds Doro in the love she had buried.
John and Mary shows how the ache of loss can ebb and, with love in our hearts, transform into the good of life, allowing us to let go of the grief of death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9781663239204

Robert Fedorchek

Robert Fedorchek is a professor emeritus of modern languages and literatures at Fairfield University; he holds a BA, MA, and PhD. In addition to his first novel, The Translators, he has published eighteen books of translations of Spanish and Portuguese literature. He and his wife live in Fairfield, Connecticut.

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Copyright © 2022 Robert Fedorchek.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means,

graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by

any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author

except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Certain characters in this work are historical figures, and certain events portrayed

did take place. However, this is a work of fiction. All of the other characters, names,

and events as well as all places, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel

are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-3921-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-3920-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022908262

iUniverse rev. date: 05/25/2022

CONTENTS

Author’s Note

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Epilogue

Afterword

IN MEMORIAM

John and Mary Fedorchek

(1901-1990) and (1905-2004)

Both born and laid to rest

in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The title of this book is to honor—pay homage to, if you will—parents I loved very much. Although my father, John, was a coal miner and my mother, Mary, grew up speaking Slovak, the John and Mary in this work of fiction titled John and Mary are, save a number of externals, wholly products of my imagination.

The cities, towns, and hamlets cited are not: they are found in southwestern Pennsylvania, practically a stone’s throw from West Virginia. Buffington, too, is real, and was one of the numerous Patch towns that sprang up to house the families of the men who worked in the mines that opened up in that coal-rich region over one hundred years ago.

The cover is a watercolor that my wife and I purchased from Richard Benson, a North Carolina-based artist who paints landscape magic in the vivid colors of nature. Titled A Quiet Farm Scene, we happily have his permission to reproduce it.

With a sure sense of proportions, Regina Madwed, of Capitol Photo Interactive, Fairfield, Connecticut, took the photograph of the Scene that now graces the cover of John and Mary.

All writers need to be copyedited. The ones who choose to do that work themselves usually do a poor job of it; I count myself among them. Fortunately I have an in-house editor, so to speak—my lovely, patient wife, Theresa. She catches everything from solecisms to when to use stoup or stoop, because spell-check isn’t smart enough to recognize the difference between the two words—in context—and she is.

ONE

J ohn’s daily bath water turned black in an instant as he quickly washed off the coal dust. He wasn’t using the outdoor shower he had rigged up behind the back porch because the nozzle faced the small garden where his thirteen-year-old daughter, Doro, and three of her girlfriends were playing. It was still so hot that late afternoon that all of them had donned swimsuits to run under the water and giggle and laugh and have fun. And why not? They’re good kids. They need to have some fun. And he would have hated shooing them away. He sighed. As far as he could tell, no miner who lived in Buffington and worked at the New Salem Mine and Coke Works owned by the H. C. Frick Coke Company of Scottdale, Pennsylvania, had an indoor shower. Hell, many counted themselves lucky to own a bathtub and not have to use a circular washtub in the kitchen, as his father and other fathers had done. Still, he would’ve loved standing under that outdoor flow, no matter how cold. It had been a particularly grueling and hot day, but as his friend Joe Novotny often groused, when you’re some 520 feet below ground, the atmosphere so loaded with coal dust that you carried a wet handkerchief in a back pocket to wipe your lips because you’d be a fool to lick them, every day was grueling. And above ground? June had been hot; July, a scorcher; and these first couple of weeks of August ... the three aitches—hazy, hot, and humid. He remembered reading some months ago in the Uniontown Evening Standard that the ships of the naval aviators in the Pacific were air-conditioned. Would be nice, yeah. Really would. But I don’t begrudge those boys one damn bit . .. what they’re going through for us . ..

While working the washcloth in his ears, he heard her coming. On the run. The words at the top of her voice.

Mary burst into the little half bath. Oh my God, oh my God! John! The war’s over! It’s all over! Can you believe it? Thank God! I just happened to have the radio on when the program was interrupted for President Truman to announce that the Japanese have surrendered! At long last when— She rushed over to the small window, opened it all the way. Don’t you hear it? It’s loud enough even for your hearing! And wait till you see! People are out banging on pots and pans and tubs, on anything that’ll make noise, jumping up and down and screaming and hugging and laughing and crying, knowing now that their boys, and their brothers and fathers, will be ... She turned, collapsed against the wall, tears streaming down her face, her change of mood swift, her normally placid features now seared with the burn of anguish—anguish immediately succeeded by a cold fury that seemed to consume her. And she fixed the icy stare at him that he had seen for months, a stare he thought would never end. "As our boys, our two sons, would be returning to us. And won’t because of you. You! You! Because you signed those ... damn enlistment papers!" She had said it to him before, back in February, and she had said it again in May, on V-E Day. Wrapping a towel around his waist, he stood in the bathtub dripping water, the pain in his eyes as deep as that in hers, yet somehow different, mixed as it was with a sadness that seemed to foretell a future of impossibilities. And on this most momentous of days, August 14, 1945, which forevermore would come to be known to Americans as V-J Day, a bittersweet day for him and her and thousands of other hims and hers, he said what he had said before, Mary, please. How many times must I try to tell you that it was what they wanted, what they—

I don’t want to hear it! she cut him off with a flick of her wrist, impatiently, abruptly, as if she were chasing away a wasp. If they didn’t know any better, you should have! You’re their father! She stormed out, leaving him to stand in the middle of the bathtub, the interior blackened by a ring of coal dust.

Mary was so far away from him that he wondered if he would ever find her again. Three times now she had hurled that accusation at him. What nagged at him? That it was the third time? Was it the superstition of soldiers in trenches during World War I that it was unlucky to be the third person to have a cigarette lit from the same match or lighter? But John didn’t believe in superstition. He was, though, a coal miner, and superstition hovered all around when you were some 520 feet below ground. We’ll get the conveyor belt fixed tomorrow, if the new part comes. It should, because today’s Tuesday already. Now, with the war over, we’ll see how many shifts we work. Joe’s son has already been laid off at the Brownsville factory where .50 caliber bullets were made. Yes, sir, we’ll find out soon enough. The higher-ups at Frick figured we wouldn’t strike again with the war still on, like we did when the great John L. Lewis pulled us out of the pits in ’43. But that’s all out the window now. Still, they know we’re gonna keep pushin’ for better safety conditions, shorter workdays, and higher wages. We’ll see what we’ll see. We’re the ones going down into that dark, dirty hole in the ground while they’re up in their clean offices breathing clean air. Anyways, for sure now there’ll be cutbacks. So we gotta tread carefully. Other industries, and lots of ’em, will be affected, so why not coal? Hell, even as a senior man I could get a tap on the shoulder.

With his twenty-two years and counting in the New Salem Mine and Coke Works, John Wallek absent-mindedly tossed his towel, spilling the little lukewarm water that he had saved—in the scuttle he used for a bucket—to wash his face. Again. Fingering the stubble on his chin, he looked at himself in the antique mirror that had desilvered along the edges. Celebrate? I gotta pay tribute to my sons, that’s what I gotta do. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

TWO

J ozef and Anna Horvath’s small four-acre farm in Chalk Hill, a town southeast of Uniontown, yielded sufficient hay and seasonal vegetables for them to sell in order to keep poverty from knocking at the door. But war times had hit them hard, and although it didn’t pay much, they felt very blessed when Jozef got the job of groundskeeper at Fort Necessity, and doubly blessed when Anna was taken on as charwoman at the on-site Mount Washington Tavern.

Happy to work, like all of their generation, Sunday was still their day of rest, their day for Anna to put on her best dress, for Jozef to put on a suit and tie, their day to go to church arm in arm. And it was the day to enjoy a visit with their Mária and Janko, and with Dorothy, the granddaughter who always brought a bright smile to Anna’s ruddy face, the Doro who always received a warm hug from her grandpa and a slobbery tongue from Toby, the beagle who ran around in circles of joy whenever he laid eyes on her.

On that first Sunday after President Truman’s announcement, they were