A little East of Paris: A Cask of Armadillos*

Gwain sat in his swivel chair and studied the young woman who had copied her entire paper. It was clear that she had been crying. Gwain was unmoved by the tears. He knew that some people could turn them on-and-off. Some people burst out crying for no reason at all. Gwain wanted to know WHY. Why had she cheated? Why was she crying now?

Olivia Benavidez was the first in her family to go to college. She was the oldest of five children. Her father was a pipe-fitter in an oil refinery in Corpus (Gwain would have to look that up). Her mother was a seamstress and did alterations for weddings and prom dresses.

Gwain cut to the chase. “Why did you cheat? You knew it was wrong.”

Tears started leaking out of Olivia’s eyes. “Because I can’t write!” she wailed.

“What do you mean “You can’t write”?” Gwain asked, bordering on being dismissive.

“I got a “D” in my first writing class” Olivia said. “The harder I tried, the worse the professor graded me. If I do bad in this class, I will be on academic probation, and I don’t know how I will be able to tell my father.”

Gwain got the sense that Olivia was a “daddy’s girl” and her loathing the thought of telling him was not out of fear of punishment, but out of fear of disappointing him.

Gwain hear some minor scraping and squeaking outside his office. He had the door shut to provide (minimal) privacy. He assumed somebody was using an office chair as an ad hoc cart to move something from one office to another.

“Everybody can write” Gwain assured her. “It is something that you will get better at your entire life...but it requires practice and critical appraisal. That means turning in your own work.”

Then Gwain heard some tapping at his door.

“I am in a conference; a PRIVATE conference. Come back in fifteen minutes” Gwain said.

The person who had been tapping at the door did not respond and Gwain assumed they had gone away.

“Let me look up some of your papers from last term” Gwain suggested. “Maybe I can give you some guidance.”

All of the papers were indexed and Gwain had no problems finding her work. Her best grade was a C and he sped-read the first couple of paragraphs. Then he picked a paper from the string of “F”s she had turned in at the end of the term.

“Oh!” Gwain verbalized without knowing it.

“What do you think good writing looks like?” Gwain asked Miss Benavidez.

“I DON”T KNOW!” Olivia wailed in anguish.

“What I see from your prior work is that your last professor was marking you down early in the term because of mechanics. You could have pulled up those papers by at least a grade if you had used MZ Wozzard’s grammar and spell check” Gwain told her.

“Your later papers are almost unreadable” Gwain said, as gently as he knew how. “Your sentences are run-on...maybe the worst I have ever seen. And you use lots of big words that you are clearly not familiar with.”

"I think you were guilty of trying much too hard” Gwain said.

Before Olivia could respond, Gwain heard Cole Byrd’s distinctive voice “Play with the bull, get the horns!”

Cole was the tall, arrogant student who Gwain was expecting to “test” his resolve in regards to students who plagurized work.

Gwain swiftly stood up and strode across the tiny office to confront his unruly student...and he could not open the door.

“Ha, ha, ha, ha!” he was met with a gale of derisive laughter as Gwain rattled the doorknob. And then he heard the sound of running feet.

“Well, that is a fine kettle of fish” Gwain commented as he sat down.

Looking over at Olivia, he intuitively deduced that she was going into a panic attack.

“Oh dear!” Gwain managed to get out. “You are claustrophobic!”

“No” Olivia lied.

Gwain pretended to believe her lie. “Lots of people get stressed when they feel like they don’t have any options.”

“This is what we are going to do. You are going to start journalling RIGHT NOW” Gwain told her, his voice brooking no objection.

He slid a yellow legal pad across his desk toward her. Then he gave her two sharpened HB pencils.

“Who, what, how, where, when, why. Those are the basics” Gwain barked out.

“Write down your name. Write down the time. Write down where we are” he continued.

Olivia, appreciating the distraction, started writing.

“When you are done with those, start writing down how you feel. While you are doing that, I have to make a few phone-calls to get us out of this pickle” Gwain told her.

“Hello, Violet? I seem to have found myself in a bit of a predicament” Gwain told the Department Secretary. “Some students decided this would be a good day to pull a prank and I fear they may have wedged my door shut. Do you suppose you can call maintenance and have them get it unstuck?”

Five minutes later, Gwain and Olivia heard the heavy trudge of work boots.

“Dang! I never seen this before” the masculine voice on the other side of the door stated.

“What haven’t you ever seen before?” Gwain asked.

“It looks like whoever did this to your door planned on keeping you in there for a while. They used a half-dozen shims and it looks like they super-glued them into place. And where they don't have shims they filled with expanding foam. I am not sure how we are going to get you out.”

Gwain heard a pencil snap. He looked over at Olivia and her face was as white as a ghost.

(C) 2025 Eaton Rapids Joe, All Rights Reserved 

*Apologies to Edgar Allen Poe