Monday was Jarod’s first day of class. I wavered between wondering how a man who had spent a weekend cramming with someone else’s notes could possibly teach college classes and pondering all the strange things I had already seen him doing so well.

            The first class of the day had barely started when I snuck in and sat down in the back row. This one was the basic literature course everyone was required to take, and the small lecture hall was full. Normally the students all would have been slouched in their seats and looking bored, except those few in the literature program who actually liked literature, but today everyone was interested in the new professor who was taking Professor Doran’s place. Having a prof who murdered (allegedly) a student was definitely cool. I wondered how many parents had pulled their children out of the school in the last week.

            The new professor was sporting a considerably different look than he had all weekend. He had been fairly casual in dark turtlenecks and a very nice, long, black leather coat. Now he looked like he thought he was Tolkien, or some other Oxford don, in a dark brown suit that looked faintly British, a dark green waistcoat, and a matching tie. He also wore square-rimmed glasses, and his dark hair was very neatly spiked, almost, but not quite, like a crewcut. He looked splendid. Very professorial.

            He had four fat books in his hands, and he thunked them down on the table in front of him. “This semester, one of your projects will be to read one of these books and report on it. The books are Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, Bleak House, and Little Dorrit. They are all by Charles Dickens, one of the greatest writers in all of history. A great writer doesn’t just write a story. He says something. Shakespeare brought history to life for his audiences and made great contributions to the English language. Austen highlighted the cares and concerns of the women in her class and made them significant. And Dickens—Dickens was a muckraker. He was a tabloid writer. He was an indie filmmaker. Dickens was a man with a mission and a soapbox, and he made people listen by turning what could have been a harangue into a series of books with exciting, page-turning plots, side-splitting characters, and absolutely ridiculous situations. Dickens was funny, and he was romantic, and he was exciting, and he was passionate.

            “Now, I know what many of you are thinking. What does all this have to do with me? You live in this fast-paced modern world with your televisions and cars and fast food and your own, personal concerns, and these four books are relics from a hundred and fifty years ago, a world long dead. Right?”

            Some brave souls nodded with him. He smiled.

            “Wrong. Let me tell you something. These books are about you. Dickens wrote about your world. He didn’t write about televisions and cars and fast food, but he wrote about what’s inside you. He wrote about your hearts and about what people do to each other. How many of you have ever been involved in a lawsuit that dragged on forever?”

            A couple hands went up.

            “That’s in here.” He thumped Bleak House. “How many of you know someone in prison? All of you—your professor. That’s in here.” He thumped Little Dorrit. “How many of you have ever tried to make something right and just happen and been blocked on every side by bureaucracy? That’s in here.” Bleak House. “How many of you have felt victimized by someone in authority? That’s in here.” Nicholas Nickleby. “How many of you have seen an abusive man beat up a woman? That’s in here.” Oliver Twist. How many of you have been adopted and have longed to know who your real family is? That’s in here.” Bleak House. “And here.” Oliver Twist. “How many of you have seen injustice and been afraid to do anything about it? That’s in here.” Nicholas Nickleby.

            “You just might find your own lives and situations in these books. And if you don’t, you’ll find someone you know, or some situation or social structure you recognize. Dickens is all about what we call social justice. You’ll learn about that this semester. This semester this class isn’t going to be about learning the dry bones of the historical use of literature. It’s going to be about learning to see. You’re going to learn to read all over again, so that if you ever pick up an old classic again, you’ll find more than a good story. You’ll find what the author is trying to get you to see about yourself or your world. This is what education is about: widening your eyes to really see the world around you.

            “That will be your primary project this semester. You will analyze what your book is saying about your world. Look at it through the lens of your own experience and your career goals. Look at it historically and psychologically and through all the realms it deals with. Let it force you to look at your world.

            “Now, because I know you already bought all the books for this course, I have bought your books for you.” He leaned down under the table and lifted up onto it four heavy boxes. Somebody spontaneously applauded and others joined in. Jarod grinned. “Social justice. I haven’t taken roll yet. When I call your name, come down here, tell me your major, and I will give you your book.” He looked at his roll sheet. “Sonja Adams.”

            A girl got up and went down to him. “My major is Politics, Professor Clennam.”

            “Then it’s Little Dorrit for you. Midori Arakawa.”

            “I want to be a social worker, Professor, when I’m done with my philosophy degree.”

            “Then you get Oliver Twist. Though I strongly recommend Bleak House as well. Jason Aronson.”

            “Languages, Professor.”

            “Nicholas Nickleby for you. William Bates.”

            “It’s Bill, Professor, and I’m going to study law.”

            “Then why are you here?”

            The chubby boy shrugged. “It’s family tradition for the first year.”

            “Well, here’s Bleak House for you.”

            He continued through the whole roll, and the class period was nearly done by the time he was, so he dismissed them early. As everyone was getting up and leaving, he called quietly, “Amy Doran.”

            I got up and went down to his table.

            “And what’s your field of study, Miss Doran?”

            “I don’t know,” I said.

            He picked up one of his four books still on the table. “Try this one.”

            It was not, as I had thought, Little Dorrit.

            “I might have given you Sense and Sensibility, a book about a young woman quietly waiting for life to happen to her. But here’s Nicholas Nickleby. It’s about a young man who loses his father and his home and his stability and is shoved out into a harsh world, his head spinning, and eventually he has to decide what he’s going to do in it.”

            “Defend the weak and abused,” I said. “Rescue the Smikes, thrash the Mr. Squeers and Sir Mulberry Hawks, expose the Ralph Nicklebys. Is that it?”

            “That’s it.”

            “Tell me—do you think I’m going to lose my father?”

            “No. But I think you’ll both be different after this.”

            “I know.” I purposefully changed the subject. “Jarod, I take it all back. You’re a magnificent teacher! You had those students eating out of your hand!”

            “Eating out of my hand? What—like pets? That’s not very flattering.”

            “It’s generally considered a compliment. They might actually end up liking Dickens.”

            “I hope so. Now, help me with a small point. Do you think Nicholas Nickleby was wish-fulfillment for Dickens?”

            “Oh, that’s a new one.” I sat down on his table  and thought about it. “I’d call that an excellent hypothesis. You could write a paper on it. As a child Dickens was in such a school as they sent Nicholas to teach in. Like David says in David Copperfield, his most autobiographical book, ‘I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support of any kind, from anyone, that I can call to mind, as I hope to go to heaven.’ He and the other children must have longed for just such a person as Nicholas to come along. A father- or older-brother-figure, who sees their terrible situation and sets them all free. Doesn’t everyone want a hero to come along and rescue them? A knight-errant, a superhero…”

            “A father-figure,” Jarod murmured. His eyes were seeing something far away, something painfully bewildering.

            You never got your Nicholas Nickleby, did you? Was there someone who should have been—and wasn’t? You grew up in a circus as a trained monkey, and no one rescued you.

            “Stop.”

            “What? Stop what?”

            “Every once in a while you look at me as if you’re reading my mind.”

            “Oh. Sorry. Just…”

            “Thinking. About what?”

            “Circuses.” Something in his eyes went suspicious, and I went on hurriedly. “Cotton candy, you know. I was trying to think of somewhere where we could get some proper cotton candy, but there are no circuses or carnivals around here this time of year.”

            His suspicious eyes asked, How did you get from father-figure to circuses? He said, “Oh. Well, I have Donne to teach on in fifteen minutes. I’ll leave it to you to write the paper.”

            “Paper?”

            “On Nicholas Nickleby.”

            “Alright, then. I will.”

            “Are you going to come eavesdrop on my Donne class?”

            “Probably.”

            I did, and when it was over I was even more impressed than ever. It’s one thing to teach on Dickens to a basic English literature class, quite another to teach on John Donne to an advanced literature class. Dickens was all story, history, and society, Donne all metaphysics and philosophy. But he taught him beautifully, if not with as much passion as Dickens, at least with as much intelligence and wit, as if he had been doing it all his life. The man astonished me. Why was a man with such genius (I don’t use the word lightly) wandering his way through life and teaching English and Russian literature? He was a problem-solver—why didn’t he take his talents and passion to the police or the FBI or the military or medicine?

            “You’re staring at me like that again.”

            The lecture hall was empty, and I was still sitting in my seat in the back row.

            “Jarod, why are you here?”

            “What do you mean? I’m teaching John Donne.”

            “Why? You can do anything you want to, can’t you? Anything.”

            “I can be anything I want to be. I can learn anything I want to learn.”

            “Anything at all. Quantum physics, Finnish, John Donne, brain surgery—”

            “Yes.”

            “So why are you doing this?”

            With a sigh he lowered himself next to my chair, one knee on the floor. “Justice. You said it yourself. Your father is innocent. I want to make sure he gets justice.”

            “Is that what you do? You go around and find people who need justice, and you get it for them? And you become whatever you need to be to do so.”

            “I told you you see too much.”

            “What have you been? A safecracker—a policeman—a psychiatrist—a cook in a diner?”

            “All of the above. An oil tanker captain, a doctor, a toxic waste engineer—”

            “A coroner?”

            “Yes. I help people. It’s what I do. It’s what I live to do.”

            “Why?”

            “How can anyone live in this world and see all the injustice and not want to do something about it? I see someone hurt, and I have to help, in any way I can. Maybe, someday, I’ll be able to atone—”

            “For what?” I whispered.

            His eyes darkened. “Don’t ask, Little Dorrit. You can’t know the things I’ve done.”

            But I can, and I will. I put my hand on his arm. “Thank you.”

            “For what?”

            “For being who you are.” Whoever that is. “For being my and my father’s Arthur Clennam and Nicholas Nickleby.”

            “It is…my privilege.”

            I went home that afternoon, and Jarod did…whatever he did. He met people at the college and learned about them, somehow insinuating himself into Tim Morone’s group of friends and getting them to talk about him. He studied more English literature and more police files, searching for some real clue amid all the plethora of evidence against my father. All that to say I don’t have much of an idea what he really did. I drew up a few character studies of people at the Marshalsea, the people closely connected to my father through friendship, work, or both.

            I had a very unexpected visitor that afternoon, a short man with grey hair and a round face, dressed casually in slacks and a button-up shirt. The last time I had seen him, he’d been in grey suit and restrained purple tie. He smiled at me as he stood on my front porch. He had a warm smile, like he meant it.

            “Amy Doran? I’m Pastor Albert Wojciechowski, from—”

            “I know who you are. I had hoped you didn’t know who I was.”

            “I didn’t. Not until you left.”

            “Why did you— Bother. Why don’t you come in, Pastor W—er—”

            He laughed. “Don’t worry. No one can pronounce my last name. It’s Polish. Call me Pastor Bert.”

            “That’s not Polish,” I said with a smile as I led him into the living room.

            “No, good old English.”

            “I was just about to have some tea. Green. Would you like some?”

            “Why, yes, I would.”

            I collected the things from the kitchen and set them on the living room coffee table. He was looking at my Japanese prints.

            “I like your artwork, Ms Doran.”

            “Call me Amy. Do you like Japanese art?”

            “Yes, I do. It’s a bit of a hobby of mine.”

            “Oh! Then maybe you can answer a question I have— Never mind. You didn’t come here for an art history consultation.” I poured us each a cup of green tea.

            “Thank you. I’d be glad to answer any question I can. But you’re right. I didn’t. I try to visit all our visitors, when they’re in town. Usually they fill out a little card, and I don’t have to do detective work.” He smiled, lines around his eyes crinkling.

            “I’m sorry,” I said uncomfortably. “I hope I didn’t disrupt anything.”

            “Maybe I should be sorry. I obviously disrupted you, though it was completely unintentional.”

            “I know. But why—?”

            “Why were we praying for you? Well, we know this has to be a very difficult time for you, Amy. We’d like to be any help and support we can to you.”

            “Even if my father’s guilty?” I said bluntly.

            “Especially if he’s guilty. We’re not a social club for the pure and innocent. If we were, I wouldn’t be allowed in.” His eyes crinkled again. “We’re people who know we all need help and look to God to give it to us.”

            “I’ve got help.” I didn’t mean to say it as abruptly as I did. But then I wanted to smile. I’ve got my own guardian angel. I don’t suppose God had anything to do with that, did he?

            “I’m glad. I’d just like you to know that we’re available any time you need us. You can come into my office and talk any time, or if you’d be more comfortable with a woman, I know a couple who would love to know you. And we’ll keep praying for you and your father, if you don’t mind.”

            I smiled. “Would you stop if I did?”

            “Well, I’d stop announcing it in church, at least. Would you prefer that?”

            “Pastor Bert, my situation has been splashed all over the newspapers all over the country for the consumption of people who hope my father is guilty because it makes such a good story. If I can’t stop a bunch of nosy reporters, I certainly can’t stop people who actually want to do something nice for me, in their own way, and I don’t know that I want to. Just don’t start laying hands on me in public.”

            He laughed. “We won’t, I promise. Do you think your father would mind if I visited him?”

            I stared. “You’d do that?”

            “Oh, yes.”

            “I don’t think he’d mind. It’s really boring where he is. They let me bring him books, but awaiting trial for murder is hardly conducive to a cozy little read. The question is whether they’ll let you visit.”

            “They should. I’m clergy. Well, I’ve taken up too much of your time, Amy. You’re welcome to come back to our church next Sunday, you and your friend.”

            “Thank you,” I said automatically as we stood up.

            “Oh—what was the question you wanted to ask me? The art history question?”

            “Well—the picture is upstairs in my room—”

            “I’ll wait.”

            I ran upstairs and took the sad dragon down from where I had hung him on my wall. “This picture,” I said when I showed it to Pastor Bert.

            “Oh, I know that one. ‘Dragon and Waves.’ The original is a long screen. Mid-eighteenth century, I think.”

            “That’s what the back of the print says. I was just wondering if it was ever stolen. About twenty years ago.”

            His brow wrinkled. “Let me think. ‘Dragon and Waves.’ Stolen… Wait—wait. Yes, I think it was. Sometime in the early ‘70s. I remember now. It was a big mess. A family who felt they had moral rights to it because it had been in their family for a generation or two stole it from someone who had recently bought it legally.”

            “Did they ever get it back?”

            “Yes. It was recovered with the help of an expert in criminal behaviors or something like that. It’s the Los Angeles County Museum of Art now, I think.”

            An expert in criminal behaviors? My head spun. Or something like that. Definitely something like that. A little boy!

            “Amy, are you alright?”

            “Oh, yes. Thank you for telling me. I heard something about it in passing and was curious. I like this painting. I don’t know why.”

            “You’ve got to wonder what makes the dragon look so depressed.”

            “Yes, you really do. Thank you, Pastor Bert.”

            He crinkled at me. “Anytime.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

            “The pastor from the Methodist church visited me this afternoon,” I told Jarod later that evening. We were having a brief consultation after meals at other people’s houses. I hadn’t been able to say no to Jan Bezic again, and he’d been with Donald Douglas, head of the sciences department. “He was very nice. I’m trying to decide if I should go back next Sunday.

            “I think you should.”

            “Why?”

            “They’re good people. We all need good people around us. It’s too easy to find bad people. You have to hold on to the good ones when you find them.”

            “Have you been able to sort out the good from the bad at school?”

            “After one day?”

            I shrugged. “You’re good at reading people, aren’t you?”

            “Give me a few more days. Tell me what you think of Donald Douglas.”

            “Scottish. Acts more Scottish than he really is. Goes around in a kilt on Halloween and scares the little kids with his claymore and blue paint.”

            “Blue?”

            “According to tradition, it’s an old Pict tradition. Scottish history. They used to go into battle wearing nothing but blue paint. I don’t know if it’s true, but happily, Don wears a kilt.”

            “Does he go into battle?” Jarod chuckled.

            “He meets with the state Scottish Society and goes into battle with them. Thank goodness he doesn’t play bagpipes.”

            “Hey, bagpipes are wonderful!”

            “You must be Scottish. Anyway, Don is our Mr. Boythorn.”

            Jarod chuckled. “Is he? Does he have a canary?”

            “No, sadly. He’s a genuinely nice, if noisy, man who just enjoys scaring the kids on Halloween just a little too much.”

            “Hmm. Interesting.”

            “It’s a very long step from scaring kids on a day they expect to be scared to torturing a student.”

            “Yes, it is.”

            “What about Tim’s friends? Did they tell you anything about him?”

            “They mentioned he was flush with cash this semester, more so than his work-study job warranted. He boasted that he’d had a windfall but wouldn’t tell them its source. There’s something one of them isn’t telling me. Do you know Maggie Chen?”

            “Vaguely. She’s in Philosophy. Brilliant. Tim was in the brilliant-but-arrogant crowd.”

            “Well, now she’s brilliant-but-scared. Tim might have told her something, and now she’s scared.”

            “You think the money was from blackmail?”

            “It’s very likely. I think I’d like to see his bank account.”

            “Have fun trying to get the bank to give you access.”

            He grinned. I stared at him suspiciously. He had managed to get the police files.

            “Okay, Jarod, show me.”

            “Show you what?”

            “How you intend to get into Tim’s bank account.”

            He gave me a long look. “Do you care if it’s illegal?”

            I pressed my lips together and gave him a hard stare back.

            “Fine. Have a seat.”

            We sat at his kitchen table, and he connected his computer to the Internet. He did things I had never seen anyone do on a computer before, and in about fifteen minutes we were looking at a bank account with Tim’s name on it.

            “I would never have imagined that was possible,” I murmured. “You got into the bank’s records through the Internet?”

            “It’s called hacking.”

            “Virtual housebreaking. I don’t know anyone who can do something like that. How do you learn this?”

            “Illegally,” he said shortly. “Look at this. Three regular deposits of five hundred dollars each over the course of a month. That’s considerably more than he got from his work study, which is reflected in these two payments here. He was here for three weeks before school started?”

            “Yes, unfortunately. He was secretary to Don Douglas, and a good one, too, I understand. Don was putting together a video lecture series, and Tim was helping him. When he wasn’t being a complete pill, Tim really knew what he was doing. Why would he go and do something as stupid as blackmailing someone?”

            “He didn’t earn much through work study. Maybe he needed the money.”

            “Maybe. But I’m wondering if it wasn’t about his arrogance.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “He liked having the advantage over someone. In class he would try to fluster the teacher by bringing up theories no one had ever heard of—you know you sound somewhat stupid if your student knows something you don’t. If he had information that gave him power over someone, maybe extorting money only made it all the better.”

            Jarod was nodded. “Once again, I’m impressed. Your psychological analysis is excellent—as long as it’s accurate. Now, I wonder if the information Tim knew was the same information your father knows or something different.”

            “Two different pieces of dirty laundry on the same person? That’s careless. Tim finds out one thing, blackmails the person; my father finds out another thing, starts doing some quiet investigating. The person discovers my father doing the investigating, kills the blackmailer and frames the truth-seeker. But what does my father know and about whom?”