Job

Job is a character in the fourth Pendergast novel, Still Life with Crows. He is a 51-year old man, the son of Winifred Kraus, owner of the local inn and tourist attraction, Kraus' Kaverns. In her youth, Kraus was impregnated by an unnamed man and forced by her strict, conservative father to raise the child. However, in order to hide her and the family's shame, Kraus was forced to raise her son in the cave-system behind the house. She named him Job after the Biblical figure.

Over the years, Kraus raised Job with only rudimentary language skills and kept him completely isolated from the outside world. She would deliver food supplies only periodically as Job aged. Job retained an almost childlike innocence about his surroundings with absolutely no understanding of the outside world or human beings beside his mother. One day, an unfortunate woman, Sheila Swegg, an amateur explorer, found the backdoor entrance to the cave-system where Job lived. Job accidentally killed her in his excitement and wonder at meeting a new person, and ritually arranged her body along with numerous Native American artifacts in a clearing. The discovery of the body and Job's subsequent exploration of the outside world via the backdoor entrance sets off a deadly chain of events.

Job is described as a curious and creative man-child who had entertained himself for decades in the underground cavern system. Physically he is described as very large, with milky-white, pasty skin, blue eyes flecked with blood, and a wispy beard. He has a wide, moon face, frequently plastered with a dopey smile of rotten teeth. More significantly, having spent decades traversing the caves primarily through climbing, Job is monstrously strong with incredibly powerful arms and grip strength. He is able to pulverize bone with his bare hands and violently rip limbs off man and animal alike. His nails are tough and horn-like. He has a hunched back due to a fall sustained when he was ten years old that went untreated. He is described as smelling immensely foul. He still wears tattered handmade childlike clothes (e.g., suspenders, and pants with rocket ships on them) from his mother.

Job is severely injured and incapacitated in a fall in the caverns brought on by several gunshots from Special Agent Pendergast and Sheriff Hazen. However, he does not die as suspected but instead reappears later at the trailer home of Corrie Swanson. Only her quick thinking of offering to be "friends" with Job spares her his rage. He is last seen being treated at the nearby hospital while shackled and under guard, his mother at his side. As Kraus reads Job's favourite childhood nursery rhymes, Pendergast realizes the bizarre ritual tableaus created by Job were a simple-minded recreation of these childhood fables.