THE PROGRAMMER

(CORRECTED EDITION)

BRUCE JACKSON

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York
The Programmer (Corrected Edition)
by Bruce Jackson
Copyright © 2025

Published by BlazeVOX [books]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without

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Printed in the United States of America

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First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-504-5
Library of Congress Control Number: incoming

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THE PROGRAMMER
Part One
ONE

When Eddie got home, Betty was in the living room

watching television. She yelled a hello to him and he answered
her. The kitchen was exactly as he had left it. The dishes were
neatly stacked alongside the sink and the papers and envelopes
were neatly stacked on the kitchen table. He poured a cup of
coffee and sat down to attack the envelopes. He didn’t feel
very well.
He looked at the neat pile of envelopes directly in
front of him on the bare Formica table. He looked at them for
a long time. They didn’t move and neither did be. He knew
they wouldn’t go away. He had to make them go away. There
was no way he could make them all go away.
To the left of the pile was his checkbook. The plastic
cover was supposed to look like leather; it was bright red and
had his name in small gold leaf letters in the lower right-hand
corner of the front. To the right of the pile of envelopes were
his pen and the green coffee mug, He drank some of the
coffee, got up and poured some more, then opened the first
envelope.
Sounds of commercials burst from the other room. He
hated the way television stations doubled the volume for
commercials. They didn’t want you to get away for free. Betty
came into the kitchen, took a beer from the refrigerator, and
went out again without saying anything to him. Different
theme music came and went. More commercials.
After a while he leaned back in the chair, his body
stiff. He hadn’t moved for some time. The coffee in the green
13
mug was cold. He thought about dumping it back into the
Norelco coffee maker, which was now one-third full, and
pouring hot coffee back into the cup. But he had already had
four cups and he knew another would keep him from falling
asleep. As it was, he was feeling that odd twitchy sensation in
his arms he got when he’d had too much coffee. It was starting
to affect him more and more lately.
“Shit.”
“What?” Betty said from the other room.
“I was talking to myself.”
“You’re doing that more and more lately.”
He looked through the doorway. She hadn’t turned
around. The back of her head was absolutely motionless. She
was watching “The Price is Right.” Sometimes when she
watched it she wrote her guesses on a small pad; when the
announcer told the real price of the items, she wrote those in a
parallel column. After the program, during the commercials,
she would show Eddie how well she had done.
All the envelopes except one contained current bills.
The one not a bill was a letter from the office of the deputy
mayor telling Eddie his complaint would be investigated
immediately. The letter was three weeks old and nothing had
been investigated.

The incident had happened two months earlier. Eddie

had just finished shaving. He was standing in the dark
bedroom, near the window; he was still in his bathrobe. His
trousers and shirt were hanging neatly in the closet. He looked
out the window and saw, in front of the house, garbage
collectors lifting his green plastic containers to be dumped into
the large city garbage truck. They looked eerie under the

14
streetlamp. Something seemed wrong, out of place. It took a
moment to realize what it was: all the wheels on the left side
of the garbage truck were on Eddie’s lawn. The driver had
parked on the grass so the crew wouldn’t have to walk so far.
Eddie ran downstairs to yell at them, but by the time
he got to the front door, the truck had moved two houses
down the block. He would have chased them, but he felt
foolish standing there barefoot in his orange robe. It was a
cold morning.
There was a large muddy track across the lawn, exactly
the width of the garbage truck’s double tires. There had been a
melting of a heavy snowfall not long before, and the relatively
warm two weeks since then had seen the first of the heavy
spring rains. There might be more snow and freezes later, but
for now the ground was soggy and soft. The wheels had cut an
ugly trench several inches deep.
He went into the house and furiously wrote a letter of
complaint to the mayor. He didn’t even make his morning
coffee or read the Courier or have his muffin; the letter was
more important. He waited a week, but there was no reply. He
sent another letter, which was also ignored. Then he saw in
the morning paper an article announcing that the mayor was
not going to run for reelection; he said he had been in
government a long time, had done a lot of public service, and
was this year eligible to collect a pension. He said a pension
was no good if you didn’t use it. and he intended to use his
immediately at the end of his term. The political reporter for
the Courier asked about a rumor going around which said the
mayor had arranged with the governor to be appointed to a
state regulatory commission on his retirement. The mayor had
no comment. The reporter pointed out that it was possible to

15
receive a full salary as a regulatory commission member from
the state while continuing to receive a full pension from the
city. The mayor had no comment on that either. The county
chairman, who was present at the press conference, said the
Democratic Party candidate would be the present deputy
mayor, a young man named Lester Fogg.
Eddie wrote Lester Fogg that night. Three days later
he got a call, from a man named Wister, who said he was
Fogg’s executive assistant. Wister said he was at the office of
the Sanitation Department. “I’m going to put someone on the
phone,” Winter said. “You explain it all to her. She’s in charge
of this sort of thing.”
Eddie wondered how often the garbage trucks drove
on people’s lawns if they had to have a woman in charge of it.
“Now, sir,” a nasal voice said, “what seems to be your
problem?”
“Did you read my letter?” Eddie said.
“Of course. I have them right here. All three of them.”
“It’s all in there.”
“Your letter doesn’t specify the extent of the damage
to your lawn.”
“Sure it does. I said the rut goes clear across my lawn
and it’s the width of a city garbage truck’s rear tires. That’s the
extent of the damage.”
“But how long is it, sir? I have to know that.”
“You want me to go outside with a ruler? It’s raining.”
“I have to know how long it is.”
“Twenty-seven feet.” He made up the number, the
first time he had ever done such a thing. He felt very good
about it.

16
 “Thank you. That’s all we had to know. If you had
told us that before, we would have fixed it immediately.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“We have to plan things. Everything will be taken care
of.”
“When?”
“That’s not up to me. We don’t handle these repairs.
The Parks Department does that. It depends on their
schedule. Very soon.” She hung up.
A month passed. The spring rains intensified. There
were days when one could go outside without a coat. The
neighborhood foliage greened and thickened. The grass on his
lawn did not grow in to cover the dark tire tracks, which
curved across it like a saber scar. No one from the city ever
came. Eddie wrote Fogg, the deputy mayor, again and got in
return the letter thanking him for his inquiry, the three-week-
old letter promising an immediate investigation.
The only change was that the garbage men seemed to
leer into his windows as they dumped the contents of the
green plastic containers into their enormous silver truck, and
the containers were now usually left on their sides out in the
street rather than standing up in the driveway.

The tracks of the garbage truck were a thorn, but the

bills were like spears. Sometimes at night Eddie dreamed
about the bills, dreamed he was suffocating in an enormous
storm of envelopes with shiny glassine address slots.
They lived frugally, but it didn’t seem to matter. He
had gotten, in the past three years, a six percent cost of living
increase, the maximum allowed city workers who were not
political appointees. That was less than one quarter of the real

17
increase in the cost of living. His raise didn’t equal the increase
in real estate taxes. And the six percent increase had lifted him
a tax bracket, so even though his money now bought less than
his smaller previous salary, the federal and state governments
taxed him more heavily than before.
Utilities had skyrocketed. He had lowered the
thermostat, as the President suggested, even though Betty
complained about the discomfort of wearing a sweater in the
house. But it still cost twice as much to heat the house as last
year and four times what it cost three years ago. In addition,
the utility bills included an eight percent sales tax, so he was
being taxed on the inflation. The school taxes and sewer taxes
had gone up, as had the city water bill and the Social Security
deduction.
And silver garbage trucks drove across the goddamned
lawn.
He wrote checks and slid them into the envelopes
with their little windows. By the time he was halfway through
the pile, the balance column in the checkbook said he had
$7.27 left, which was not enough to neutralize any more of the
bills. It was probably just enough to pay the monthly service
charge on the checking account. The bank ran advertisements
that said it gave free checking service, but a small line at the
bottom of the ad revealed that the service was free to people
who maintained a minimum balance of three hundred dollars
through the entire month. It had been years since Eddie had
been able to maintain a minimum balance of three hundred
dollars. If his account got any smaller, they would bounce one
of the checks rather than wait for his next deposit to collect
their service fee.

18
 He closed the checkbook and put it in a drawer, along
with the bills still to be dealt with. He put stamps on the
envelopes he had sealed and put them in the mail slot, where
the mailman would pick them up the next morning. It was the
last week of the month; Eddie was sure that the bills he would
find in their place would leave him even deeper in the hole.
He put the green mug into the machine with the
other dishes, dumped some Calgon into the slot on the door,
and pushed the button to start the washing cycle. The kitchen
was neat and clean now, except for the letter from the deputy
mayor, which was still on the Formica table. Eddie read the
letter again, then threw it into the garbage pail.
Betty was watching another television program, a
rerun of “Bonanza,” which he knew she had seen at least a half
dozen times. A can of beer sat on a cork coaster near her left
hand. It was partway off the coaster, and condensation from
the cold can had dripped onto the tabletop, making an oblong
puddle. The water went toward the table’s edge, curved a little,
then disappeared under the framed high school graduation
photograph of Eddie junior, now a sophomore at Cornell.
Eddie junior came home twice a year, never for more
than three days. He wrote letters twice each semester. He was
going to be a hotel manager in some interesting place, he told
them the last time he visited. Eddie senior had said he hoped
it paid well because Cornell was a very expensive school. Eddie
junior’s face was blank: it was no problem of his. Eddie senior
asked if Eddie junior would be having a job this summer.
Eddie junior said he would think about that and he was going
out now; could he have the car? Their longest conversation in
five years.

19
 Eddie knew it was his fault as much as the boy’s, but it
was too late now to change things, and he knew neither of
them really wanted to: they didn’t like one another very much.
Betty was still watching television when Eddie went
to bed.

On the bus to work the next morning, Eddie had a

terrible headache. His eyes hurt. He knew he would have to
change his life soon or he would go crazy. Or die. Every time
he looked at the growing stack of envelopes he felt a cloying
constriction in his chest, as if cold fingers were, one by one,
closing off the spaces for air, the passages for blood. And every
time he looked at Betty sitting there on the sofa, her feet up
on the gray ottoman and the can of beer always within reach,
he got an acid feeling deep in his stomach.
The bus stopped to admit some passengers waiting in
front of a branch of the Marine Midland bank. Even though
spring was several weeks old, the morning wind was sharp and
damp and they clustered close to the door, jamming against
one another in their rush to get. Inside. Two men stood by the
coin box, arguing over which was first.
“It don’t matter,” the driver said in a flat voice. “The
bus ain’t going nowhere until you’ve all put your money in.
Why argue?”
“I was first,” the taller man said.
“I was,” the other one said.
“Why don’t you both get off and start over again?” a
Black man in the second row said.
“You can go fuck yourself, that’s what,” the taller man
said.

20
 Eddie looked at the bank. It was dark inside, except
for a small fluorescent light in the back.
Perhaps he could rob the bank. A daring daylight
robbery. The newscasters on television always said that,
especially on Channel 7: “A daring daylight robbery occurred
today at the Main Street branch of…” When else could you
rob a bank? he thought. They’re locked at night. He pictured
himself in the wide space between the tellers’ cages and the
front door, wearing one of those ski masks with slits for the
eyes and mouth and little round holes for the nostrils. He
lightly held a black sawed-off shotgun, the muzzle of which he
moved constantly around the room at the people he had
ordered to lie down on the floor, their hands clasped behind
their heads. He wondered if their noses would hurt. He
thought it must be hot inside those masks. And most bank
robbers seemed to get caught. It would be his luck to be one of
the bank robbers who got caught. Or whose getaway car
wouldn’t start.
Eddie’s boss looked at the clock on the wall as Eddie
came into the office. It was eight thirty-two. The boss didn’t
say anything. Two minutes wasn’t enough of a lateness to say
anything. But he made sure Eddie knew he had noticed the
time. The boss was a short thick man who always wore three-
piece suits that never quite closed properly. He liked to wear
brown bow ties.
“You’re working on the motor vehicle violation
program today,” he told Eddie. “They want printouts on all
cars with more than two outstanding parking violations. They
want it by owners, correlated to show multiple ownerships.
They’re having a campaign against scofflaws.”

21
 “They usually do that in November,” Eddie said,
“after the elections. How come they want that stuff now?”
“I think it’s only certain scofflaws they’ll be going
after. Well-known Republicans. You know how that works.
Two or three leaked articles to the Courier. ‘Councilman
Barber, who is up for reelection, has twenty-two unpaid
tickets, a reliable source close to the investigation revealed
today.’ The Courier loves tips like that. Anyhow, that’s none of
your business, or mine either. You just work up the program
they want and put it on the machine.”
“What about the water bill survey? You told me
yesterday you wanted that finished immediately.”
“Finish it tomorrow.”
Eddie spent part of the morning at the motor vehicle
office getting the information category codes. He talked
awhile with a woman who worked there, Edna Kringle, who
was first cousin to some political person in town. She always
seemed to spend a lot of time talking on the phone, and no
one ever yelled at her about it. Unlike other people in City
Hall, she didn’t seem to be afraid of being caught doing
something wrong, nor did she spend her time hustling or even
trying to catch someone else doing something wrong. She had
always been friendly to Eddie.

During his lunch hour he sat on a concrete bench

outside and watched a crew begin tearing down the wall of red
bricks the mayor had recently put up around the monument in
the plaza. Bricklayers had spent most of the previous month
putting up the wall. Then some people noticed that it made
the plaza almost inaccessible. The mayor said the wall created
little private spaces in the urban environment, small concealed

22
areas where people might find some isolation during the day.
The construction, when looked at from the top of City Hall or
the hotel across the street, was like an ancient maze. There
were four entrances, one at each major compass point; no path
went directly through to another side. The several interior
walls created small cul-de-sacs, each of which had a stone
bench against the wall at its dead end. The Courier article on
public opposition to the project quoted a criminologist who
said the brickwork was a paradise for muggers and rapists,
both of whom could now work in full confidence all day long.
He said the plaza was now dangerous in the daylight and
absolutely unusable at night.
The mayor responded to a reporter’s questions. “No
one comes downtown at night anyway, and where were those
people when the arrangement was going up? You can’t just
come in with objections when something’s finished. That’s not
how public works works.” The reporter offered no response,
but everyone knew the answer: City Hall was on the lake front
and no one, without a compelling reason, went there between
November and April. The icy winds blowing down from
Canada could freeze tears to your eyes in seconds.
The pressure became so great the mayor got a second
federal grant, this one to pay for tearing the wall down.
Because of increases in labor costs the wall cost more to tear
down than it had to put up.

Eddie went inside the building at twelve fifty-seven

and got to his office exactly at one. He spent most of the
afternoon preparing the program. When he had finished, he
took it to the computer center and told the clerk that it was to

23
be run immediately and the printout was to be hand-delivered
to the police commissioner’s office.
“We don’t have any errand boys here,” the clerk said.
“I’m telling you what I was told to tell you. You do
what you want.”
“Goddamned place. We’re not goddamned errand
boys, you know.”
“I know that.” Eddie said.
“Those fuckers upstairs don’t know that.”
Eddie shrugged and went back to his office.

The bus home that night was crowded and he felt a

slight rawness in his throat, perhaps the beginning of a cold.
He sneezed once near his stop and several people scowled at
him. He pretended he didn’t notice.
Betty was watching “Star Trek.” the episode about
small furry animals called Tribbles. Tribbles multiplied at an
exponential rate and filled portions of the ship by the third
commercial. It was one of her favorite “Star Trek” episodes.
She yelled out to him that his dinner was on the table.
He hated eating so early and she knew it, but if they
ate later it meant she missed “All in the Family” and the first
of the evening movies. When he argued it once, she said,
“You’ve got your work down there at City Hall making those
computer programs and whatever else you do. What do I
have? Nothing, that’s what I have. Don’t take what little I
have away from me.”
“I thought you said you had nothing. You can’t take
anything away from nothing.”
“You know what I meant, Eddie. Don’t try to get me
upset. I hate getting upset.”

24
 He sat alone in the kitchen and ate the overcooked
roast. He wished he had had the sense and nerve to get out
years ago, when he still might have done something with
someone interesting. Now it seemed pointless: where would
he go and what would he do? He wondered how many other
men he knew lived lives so secretly desperate. You only found
out when one of them did something crazy, like blowing his
brains out or blowing his wife’s brains out, and then everyone
said, “Who’d have thought it of him? He was the quietest
fellow in the world. Never fought with anyone.” People like
that, Eddie thought, don’t fight because they can’t find the
proper thing to vent the anger and hurt upon. Maybe they’re
too worn out to waste it in an exercise that will do them no
good.

He and Betty had started going out during their last

year of high school. She wouldn’t put out until they were
formally engaged. The night after he gave her the ring and
there was an announcement in the paper, she permitted him
to do it to her—that was her term: “All right, you can do it to
me if that’s what you want”—in the car. They had parked on a
side road near Delaware Park and she accepted his clumsy
penetration as if it were some kindness women bestowed on
men, as if the sex were something in which women had only a
passive role, as if the entire idea were some annoyance
invented by men. It was years before he understood what a
hustle that was, and years more before he appreciated how
perfectly he had helped himself get perfectly trapped by it.
He somehow became responsible for her. She never
quite said it, but if he married her as he promised she would
still be a good person, and if he abandoned her he would have

25
taken something under false pretenses. It wasn’t just the
virginity—evidence of which he hadn’t observed—but the
years she said she had already devoted to their relationship.
And it seemed a good enough idea at the time. They were
married during his second year of college. She worked as a
secretary then, first for a lawyer and then in an industrial office
of a firm that manufactured elastic yarn sold all over the world.
Just before the wedding Eddie panicked and thought about
simply fleeing the city for a while. It would ruin the semester
at school, but he could perhaps make up the work the
following summer. His two best friends—one of whom was
then in dental school and the other about to become an
insurance salesman—both assured him that all men felt that
panic just before the wedding, they had felt the same way
themselves. They walked him down the aisle and led the toasts
at the dinner. Eddie later learned that both of them had girls
with whom they secretly went out regularly. When he asked
the dentist how he could live that way, the dentist offered to
fix Eddie up with his receptionist, a woman who had, the
dentist said, “monumental jugs and a pussy that won’t quit.”
The accountant said that Eddie was a married man now, but
he obviously had a lot of growing up to do.
Betty got pregnant almost immediately and quit her
job in her third month. She got headaches during the day and
grew dizzy every afternoon. She never went back to work, and
now had no skills left with which to get a job if she wanted
one, which he knew she didn’t. Her shorthand hadn’t been
that good to begin with and she hadn’t touched a typewriter in
twenty years. Eddie had, a few years ago, tried to get her to go
back to school. The state college on Elmwood Avenue had a
lot of programs especially for women who had been out of

26
school for a long time. She said she would think about it. She
never wrote for the booklets or the applications.

She came into the kitchen while he was drinking his

cup of coffee. He had decided to have only one tonight
because his stomach was not handling a lot of coffee very well.
“The program is completed,” she said.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“The TV program.” She offered a rare smile. “You
thought I meant the other kind, your kind, didn’t you?” He
nodded. “I didn’t. I meant my kind.”
“Oh.”
“I went to the store today. Shopping.”
“Good…”
“That’s not why I’m telling you. I got a ticket. A
parking ticket. What do you think I should do with it?”
He didn’t tell her what he was thinking. “Give it to
me,” he said.
“I’ll see if I can find it.” She went into the other room.
Five minutes later she hadn’t come back, so he went looking
for her. She was sitting on the sofa, her feet up on the
ottoman. She looked at him. “At the next commercial, okay?”
“There it is,” he said. The orange parking ticket was
sitting under her beer can. It was wet and soggy. “Goddamn,”
he said. “Parked by a fire hydrant. That’s twenty-five bucks.
What’s the matter with you? You know better than to park by
hydrants.”
“I couldn’t find a parking space near the store. There
were a lot of people out shopping today, I guess. I didn’t think
I’d be inside so long. And by the time I got out, there it was.”

27
 “Twenty-five bucks,” he said again. Large letters on
the bottom of the ticket said if the fine weren’t paid within ten
days it would double.
“Don’t get so angry. It wasn’t deliberate. Can’t you fix
it? You work for City Hall. You’re down there every day.
What’s the point of working down there if you can’t get a
simple traffic ticket fixed? Everybody gets them fixed. I
think—” She was starting to say something else, but the
commercial ended and Archie Bunker appeared, saying
something to his son-in-law, a mustachioed fart Eddie found
more offensive than Archie. The sentence died in her throat
and her face relaxed as she listened to the conversation on the
screen. There was a brief lull while Archie went upstairs. “He’s
married to Laverne,” Betty said.
“Laverne?”
“Of ‘Laverne and Shirley.’ Archie’s son-in-law.
They’re married. In real life, I mean.”
“That’s wonderful.” he said.
“Yes,” she mumbled, listening to Archie and his son-
in-law argue again.
Eddie went into the kitchen and poured more coffee.
It smelled very strong and would not only upset his stomach
but keep him awake. He dumped it into the sink and poured
himself about two inches of scotch into the same cup. He
added a little water. He rarely drank liquor because it tended
to make his thinking blurry very quickly. Right now he felt
like being a little blurry.
Another twenty-five bucks to the goddamned
government. City, county, state, federal: they all took. Every
time he looked, they were taking again. The fourteen
thousand they paid him every year and the twenty-one days of

28
vacation and six holidays came to piss: they took it back every
time he turned around, or they authorized others—like the gas
company—to take more and more of what little was left.
He wished there were things he could do to make the
government spend less of his money, but nothing came to
mind. The papers were recently full of terrorist acts, but he
thought that was silly. Sometimes innocent people got hurt,
and he didn’t think that was justified. And blowing up
installations accomplished nothing because they just built new
ones which cost more to build than the old ones that had been
destroyed. Stopping operations wasn’t good enough: the
workers came in anyway, got paid anyway, and then had to
work overtime later, after things got fixed up, to make up the
lost production hours. And Eddie Argo wasn’t the kind of
man who went around making bombs. Eddie Argo was the
kind of man who got depressed and paid his goddamned bills
and wondered just how much longer he could manage not
drowning.

The next morning, during the bus ride downtown,

Eddie thought about what Betty had said. Maybe she was
right.
He told his boss he was going to lunch a half hour
early.
“Make sure you’re back at twelve-thirty then.”
“Of course,” Eddie said.
He walked down the high-ceilinged hallway and took
the long corridor left to the motor vehicle office. He peeked
in, saw Edna was alone in the room, her hands folded neatly
in her lap. She was looking at her telephone.
“Edna,” he said, “can I talk to you a minute?”

29
 “Sure, Eddie. I’m always here for somebody to talk
to.” She smiled and pointed to the chair next to her desk.
“I got a little problem,” he said, looking down at the
floor.
“Tell Edna.” She lighted a cigarette and smiled at
him. Her teeth weren’t very even, but Eddie decided she was
better-looking than he had thought. He realized he hadn’t
ever thought about her at all, nor had he looked at her for
years. She leaned back in her leather chair and he knew she
was doing it for him. He also knew that it wasn’t a movement
that meant anything, it was a movement she would have done
for any man who sat down to talk, showing she still had it. He
wished her sweater weren’t pink; he hated pink sweaters.
Eddie reached into his jacket pocket and took out the
parking ticket. “Betty—my wife—got this yesterday. Fire
hydrant. I just wondered if…”
Edna laughed. “You wondered if I could get it fixed
for you?” She laughed again, forgetting she had just inhaled
the cigarette, and immediately had a violent coughing spasm.
Her breasts heaved up and down inside the pink sweater. He
looked away, slightly embarrassed.
“You guys,” she said when she got her breath again.
“Who knows what you’re going to come up with? I thought
you’d popped out of your cocoon.”
“My what?”
“Never mind. Let me see it.” He took it from his
jacket and handed it to her. “What were you doing, trying to
wash it clean? The writing’s all blurred.”
“Betty put a beer can on it.”
“That won’t make it go away. And neither will I, I
can’t do that anymore, not since they computerized the tickets.

30
I used to could, but not now. You’re the only guy who can
disappear them now.”
“What do you mean? Me?”
“It used to be that we could just make a ticket
disappear by pulling it. Now they all exist in triplicate. One
goes to the citizen, one to the city court, and one to the state
records office. They all have to be disposed of properly, and
the state audits the ticket records to make sure none of the
municipalities misses that fine source of revenue. If you have a
friend in court, a judge can dismiss the charges, but that’s a big
deal, for people with connections, and that’s not you. Even
people with connections don’t do that much anymore because
then they owe the judges favors. It’s just not worth the small
change. The other way to make the ticket disappear is to tell
the computer it’s gone. It’s the computer that keeps all the
records. Nobody looks at the tickets themselves after they get
encoded the day they’re written. The computer gets the
dispositions. Tickets that are paid or dismissed are of no
interest to it; tickets that are outstanding too long get kicked
out in occasional surveys. You’re the programmer for the city,
right?”
“My boss is the programmer. I’m his deputy.”
“That waddly turd couldn’t program his way out of a
phone booth and you know it. He got that job because he was
Costanza’s cousin, or I should say, because he was the only
one of Costanza’s cousins who could count to ten without
getting confused. All the others work for the Fire Department
or the Police Department. You do the actual programming.
Just type out a disposition and the ticket is abolished.”
“Abolished?”

31
 “Yeah. It doesn’t officially exist anymore. Here, look it
up.” She pushed across the desk a small red booklet.
“That’s the city program manual,” he said. “I’ve got a
copy. I wrote most of it.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you. Just go up to your
console and take care of your problem. Clickety-click.”
“But that’s…” He paused, looking for a nice word.
“Illegal?”
“Yes. That’s what I was going to say.”
“Then pay the ticket.” She picked up the phone and
dialed a number. “I’ve got to call my sister now,” she said.
Eddie went to the ground floor cafeteria and got a
sandwich and container of coffee, then went back to his office
to work on the water bill survey. No one else was there; the
others were still out on their regular lunch hour.
Why not? He asked himself. It took only ten minutes
from start to finish: eight to find the code, one to decide how
to do it, and one more to type the orders into the computer
console. When he finished, the screen told him that the
violation number had been removed.
A few minutes later his office door opened. It was his
boss. He was back ten minutes early from his lunch hour.
“You’re here,” the boss said.
“That’s right,” Eddie said.
“Good,” the boss said, leaving without bothering to
close the door.

32
 Bruce Jackson was Buffalo sysop (Nickle City node) in
the pre-industrial, pre-AOL, pre-academic packet messaging
world of FidoNet in the mid-1980s. He is the author of two
books on public domain software published when PC operating
systems were simple and accessible enough for users to write
and share such programs: Rainbow Freeware (1986) and A User’s
Guide: Freeware, Shareware, and Public Domain Software
(1988).
He is also a teacher, writer, photographer and
documentary filmmaker. He is currently SUNY Distinguished
Professor and James Agee Professor of American Culture at
University at Buffalo. He is an associate member of the New
York experimental theater company, The Wooster Group.
The French government has honored him twice for his
documentary and criminal justice work: Chevalier, L’ordre
national des Arts et des Lettres, France (2002) and Chevalier,
L’ordre national du Mérite, France (2012). His field-recorded
album Wake Up, Dead Man was nominated for a Grammy
(1974).
His documentary films (all in collaboration with Diane
Christian) have been broadcast on American, French and
German public television, and exhibited at The Museum of
Modern Art and other venues. His photographic work has been
profiled in Aperture and exhibited at the Albright-Knox Art
Gallery, Center for Documentary Studies, Bibliothèque
national de France, George Eastman House, and other
galleries.
His written work has appeared in Atlantic, Harper’s, The
New York Times, The Nation, The New Yorker and scores of
other print and digital academic and general interest
publications. He is the author or editor of about fifty books and
monographs published by academic, trade and small presses,
some of the most recent of which are: The Life and Death of
Buffalo’s Great Northern Grain Elevator: 1897-2023 (SUNY
Press, 2024), Ephemera 1995-2022: On people, politics, art,
justice, torture and war (BlazeVox, 2023), Folklore Matters:
Incursions in the Field 1965-2021 (SUNY Press, 2024), The
Story is True. Expanded edition (SUNY Press, 2022), Ways of the
Hand: A Photographer’s Memoir (SUNY Press, 2022), and
Changing Tense: Thirty memento mori (BlazeVox, 2021).
The Wooster Group has based two recent plays based
on his work: The B-Side: “Negro Folklore from Texas State
Prisons”: A Record Album Interpretation and Get Your Ass in the
Water and Swim Like Me, both directed by Kate Valk. He has
been the recipient of grants from the John Simon Guggenheim
Foundation, NEA, NEH, NYSCA, NYCH and other
organizations.