Across my desk

She looked up yet again when Burch asked her if she wanted him to clean out the microwave in the corner of her office. The month's end inventory numbers where important, but the old janitor had been trying to engage her in conversation for the past half hour while he swamped out the office. She put on her far away glasses and turned away from the computer screen.
"Burch. How's your diabetes doing?"
That's all it took for the offender to stop pretending to be cleaning and lean against his broom.
Burch has spent his life more in than out of the correctional system. And he knew every one and how the system worked. But he was a newly diagnosed diabetic and he had no clue how to manage his disease.
"Not good Munkay. Not good."
Most staff would be upset if addressed by an offender by a first name with out a title before it.
The girl did not care, she knows respect does not come from a title. Burch could be her father, if her father was a black man from the south. To her the real problem she has is not lack of respect for a title, but for age.
"Your eating desserts, aren't you?"
Burch regarded her from behind hooded eyes as he propped his old body against the brooms wooden handle.
"Munkay. I can't resist free food." They both laugh.
Everyone in the prison is hungry. All have a void to fill. The food we serve inside is plenty. It just never is what they crave.
The meals are heavy on the simple carbs that are cheap and cause the offenders to gain weight and develop type two diabetes. Unfortunately the doctors are quick with the meds, but education on nutrition non existent. The leftover desserts we cannot reuse I let the kitchen workers eat up as a perk for working in my kitchen. Burch is always first in line.
"I got ya Burch, your human. Try staying away from the rice and potatoes instead."
Burch knows she knows about such things. Tell one person behind the walls any information and the whole place hears. Men like Burch have no family left to spend their time with. Gossip is his life. He had even filled the girl in on everything about her new boss before her old boss was gone, and the owner of her company. Burch has been in every facility and took his gossip with him.
"What is that a picture of there Munkay?" he asked veering the conversation away from him self.
The pictures behind her desk are limited. No photo's of family, at least not their faces.
"That's a Scottish Highlander."
"Really whats that?"
"That's a cow Burch."
"Wasn't sure there Munkay. Thought it might be a musk ox or something. We didn't have them in Mississippi."
"Course not Burch. The south is for the weak. Scottish Highlanders are a hardy breed."
"Ahhhhh -You got other animals?"
"Yup. Got just about everything."
"You got chickens?" he asks moving closer and squinting at her desk, scoping it for any juicy details left out for his sharp eyes.
Burch knows she does. Why else would a woman carry in eggs to a prison that other staff carry out. She wouldn't put it past him to somehow know the son's name that sells them.
"So many kinds I do not know what they are."
"I worked on a farm once. Back when I was a kid, Mom sent me to a farm work house. The man there raised chickens."
Burch lowered himself into the empty chair across from her, smiling as he reminisced. She knew at that point it didn't matter if she was there or not. Burch was back on that farm.
"I'd get up early before breakfast and feed the birds. That was my job. Then I'd gather the eggs. But mostly I'd watch the birds. Birds were fun to watch, how they would get along together, interact. Sometimes I would just break the eggs. Break the eggs and the hens would come running. Oh those mama's would be mad. But they would eat those broken eggs. Eat their very on eggs..."
"Burch" she said after a pregnant moment. As long as you are sitting here you want to do my numbers and I'll clean the office?"
"I wanted to talk to you Munkay."
"You are."
"What happened to your hands?"
She stiffened. Leave it to Burch to sucker her in like this to extort the facts on why her hands were raw and cut. She knew everyone would ask, but did not want any to know of her own clumsiness. So she let people think she had been in a fight. Kicking ass is better than falling over. Respect behind bars can be earned in different ways.
"I had to take care of someone who asked too many questions."
"No one can do that to you, one of our own."
"Burch", she said meaning, "Stop."
"If someone is doing this. We have people out there.."
The girl grins and shoves her chair back away from his scrutinizing gaze hard enough to cause it to roll to a stop some distance back.
Burch had chose his words very carefully as not to self incriminate.
"You just need to worry about taking care of yourself. Leave the pie alone."
The girl chose her words very carefully as to keep either of them from harm.
Burch may have been offering her protection. More likely he was setting her up. But was probley the most fatherly thing the man had done. Ever.
Burch was released and returned in ninety days. Just in time to settle in for the winter.