"71" // Episode Two

Game 13, Padres 2, Mets 5, April 12, 2023 If there is one thing every fanbase can agree upon, it is that the Angels, Cubs, Royals, Diamondbacks, Pirates, Mariners, Brewers, Dodgers, Astros, Phillies, Tigers, Braves, Red Sox, White Sox, Marlins, Rays, Rangers, Cardinals, Orioles, Blue Jays, Giants, Rockies, Yankees, A's, Guardians, Nationals, Reds, Mets, Twins, and Padres all suck.

all suck. all suck. You're listening to I Have No Process. I am your host, Nicholas England. This is the second episode of 71. When I was an adolescent, I ended each day in the dark, wondering if that morrow should be my last.

I was passively suicidal for a decade, from the fourth grade on. My frailty kept me up at night, fueled my masochistic insomnia. I was a sad, lonely little boy, craven for an adulthood I never thought I'd reach. I most despised waking before the dawn, in order to get to school on time. That was my incarceration, to have each day spawned in the same darkness as the last.

Only one person lent the experience any mercy. For every morning that I woke, I woke to Mom's fingernails, gracing the skin upon my back, my arm, my scalp. Just that gentle scratch, until I stirred enough that she could talk to me, encourage me to rise. She let me emerge into consciousness the way a flower opens to the rising sun, renewed, warmed by irresistible belonging. Sometimes she'd stay with me for 30 seconds, sometimes 20 minutes. Whatever I needed, whatever time allowed, she gave.

Until it was time to go downstairs and make our breakfast.

Game 8, Padres 5, Braves 4, April 7, 2023

Broadcasting rights keep our television off. My mother shakes loose of the deep and unplanned slumber that stole her afternoon, sets about fixing our belated dinner. A pork roast, potatoes and green beans. We wait as the appliances do the work. "We could go to the neighbors to watch the game," she smiles. But we stay where we are, eating our fill before meekly dreaming of going back to sleep.

Game 9, Padres 4, Braves 1, April 8, 2023 I ask my mother, "Who wore the better mustache, Catfish Hunter then or Matt Carpenter now?" "Catfish," she says, without needing to think. Then Janet takes a summoner's pause. "The New York Yankees," she declares, as though object and context were one and the same. She begins to reminisce in a tangle of free associations. "Ken Griffey, Dennis Eckersley, Johnny Bench. I sold him his Christmas ornaments, though Sheridan Cross sold him the tree.

"She was a pretty little thing. "I found setting up the village to be a great deal of fun, but your father wouldn't marry me so long as I worked at Pogue's." All this while Wacha strikes out the side. Baseball in Vermont. Game 10, Padres 10, Braves 2, April 9, 2023 "You can keep your death and taxes. Give me Xander Bogaerts at the plate!" If you were a carpenter, and I were a color man.

Game 11, Padres 0, Mets 5, April 10, 2023 Scherzer is pulled in a way that feels as though the Padres knocked him out. Working the pitch count toward 100, his final batter faced the crowning discomfiture. An 11-pitch strikeout by hapless Nola. The smile of the gray jester grows long in the tooth. Scherzer's velocity has tapered somewhat. His control has become erratic, yet his cunning remains. Scherzer lets you feel you've bested him as you play straight into his hands.

How satisfying it was to make him work so hard for a mere five innings. Now, let us look at the box score to examine our reward. One hit, zero runs. Game 12, Padres 4, Mets 2, April 11, 2023 In the village without a stoplight, in the library without a curator, a cohort of elders gathers to read their own words. First, Ginger's poem for Winter's End. Second, John's surveillance of his ancestors. Third, Janet recites the verses she penned six weeks ago. An ode she wrote to her grandchild.

A person imagined, if not yet conceived. "Dreaming of Iris" I first heard the poem a week before the dark spots were found, then once more the night she first confided in my wife. Once it became clear that Janet and Iris will never meet. That these dreams of ours have been viewed only through an oily film, stretched between ourselves. What shimmers as it threatens to vanish, the reflections we've held to its grimy and inconstant surface.

Game 14, Brewers 4, Padres 3, April 13, 2023 Too many crocodile clocks are ticking. Between pitches, eye contact, the window to challenge, local time at each stadium, local time in my wife's empty bed, local time here in the shadow of Mount Ascutney. The pendulum sickle on its harvest flight. Game 15, Brewers 11, Padres 2, April 14, 2023 I have wept too much today to mind the other side piling on. I watch in placid silence, honoring the ritual.

Was called out this morning for trying to build a wall against the wind, hand steadfastly fretting upon mother's hand. A humbling was due. I cannot spare her dread, cannot save anyone, either from other people's chaos or from the burden of being themselves. The applause for my diverse foresight has gone cold. Now Janet clutches for breath when I show her the mirror, the horror of a glinting dagger, brandished by her own disciple.

Withdraw instead into this deep red recliner and endure the game alone. Then, at least, she'll be safe from all my trying to keep her safe.