Still Life With Crows

At last, Pendergast broke the long silence that had settled over the parlor. His eyes remained on the old woman as he spoke: “I am sorry to tell you, Miss Kraus, that your son is dead.”

She jerked and moaned, as if the a

“He was killed in the cave,” Pendergast went on quietly. “It was unavoidable. He didn’t understand. He attacked us. There were a number of casualties. It was a matter of self-defense.”

The woman was now rocking and moaning, repeating over and over again, “Murderers, murderers.” But the accusatory tone seemed almost to drain from her voice: all that remained was sorrow.

Corrie stared at Pendergast, struggling to understand. “Herson? ”

Pendergast turned to her. “You gave me the crucial hint yourself. How Miss Kraus, when she was young, was known for her, ah, free ways. She became pregnant, of course. Normally she would have been sent away to have the baby.” He turned back to Winifred Kraus, speaking very gently. “But your father didn’t send you away, did he? He had a different way of dealing with the problem. With theshame. ”

Tears now welled out of the old woman’s eyes and she bowed her head. There was a long silence. And in that silence Sheriff Hazen exhaled loudly, as the realization hit him.

Corrie looked over at him. The sheriff’s head was swathed in bandages, which were soaked red around his missing ear. His eyes were blackened, his cheeks bruised and puffy. “Oh, my God,” he murmured.

“Yes,” Pendergast said, glancing at Hazen. “The father, with his fanatical, hypocritical piety, locked her and her sin away in the cave.”

He turned back to Winifred. “You had the baby in the cave. After a time, you were let out to rejoin the world. But not your baby. He, the sinful issue, had to remain in the cave. And that’s where you were forced to raise him.”

He stopped briefly. Winifred remained silent.

“And yet, after a time, it didn’t seem like such a bad idea, did it? Completely sheltered from the wicked world like that. In a way, it was a mother’s dream come true.” Pendergast’s voice was calm, soothing. “You would always have your little boy with you. As long as he was in the cave, he could never leave you. Never would he leave home or fall into the ways of the world; never would he leave you for another woman; never would he abandon you—as your mother once abandoned you. You were doing it toprotect him from the opprobrium of the world, weren’t you? He would always need you, depend on you, love you. He would be yours . . . forever.”

The tears were now flowing freely down the old lady’s cheeks. Her head was swaying sadly.

Hazen’s eyes were open, staring at Winifred Kraus. “How could you—?”

But Pendergast continued in the same soothing tone of voice. “May I ask what his name was, Miss Kraus?”

“Job,” she murmured.

“A biblical name. Of course. And an appropriate one, as it turned out. There, in the cave, you raised him. He grew to be a big man, a strong man, enormously strong, because the only way to move about in his world was by climbing. Job never had a chance to play with children his own age. He never went to school. He barely learned how to talk. In fact, he never evenmet another human being for the first fifty-one years of his life except for you. No doubt he was a boy with above-average intelligence and strong creative impulses, but he grew up virtually unsocialized as a human being. You visited him from time to time, when it was safe. You read to him. But not enough for him to learn more than rudimentary speech. And yet, in some respects, he was a quick boy. A desperately creative boy. Look what he was able to learn by himself—lighting a fire, making clever things with his hands, tying knots, creating whole worlds out of little things he found in the cave around him.

“Perhaps at some point you realized you were doing wrong by keeping him in the cave—away from sunlight, civilization, human contact, social interaction—but by then, of course, it would have seemed too late.”

The old lady remained bowed, weeping silently.

Hazen exhaled again: a long, pent-up breath. “But he got out,” he said hoarsely. “The son of a bitch got out. And that’s when the murders began.”

“Exactly,” said Pendergast. “Sheila Swegg, digging at the Mounds, uncovered the ancient Indian entrance to the cave. The back door. Which also happened to be used by the Ghost Warriors when they ambushed the Forty-Fives. It had been blocked off from the inside, when the warriors went back into the cave and committed ritual suicide after the attack. But Swegg, digging in the Mounds, found it. To her sorrow.

“It must have been a monumental shock for Job when Swegg wandered into his cave. He had never met another human being besides his mother. He had no idea they evenexisted. He killed her, in fear, no doubt unintentionally. And then he found the freshly cut opening Swegg had made. And for the first time, he climbed out into a vast and wondrous new world. What a moment that must have been! Because you never told him about the world above, did you, Miss Kraus?”

She slowly shook her head.

“So Job emerged from the cave. It would have been night. He looked up and saw the stars for the first time. He looked around and saw the dark trees along the creek; heard the wind moving through the endless fields of corn; smelled the thick humid air of the Kansas summer. How different from the enclosing darkness in which he had spent half a century! And then perhaps, far away, across the dark fields, he saw the lights of Medicine Creek itself. In that moment, Miss Kraus, you lost all control of him. Just as happens to every mother. But in your case, Jobwas over fifty years old. He had grown into a powerful—and transcendentally warped—human being. And the genie could not be put back in the bottle. Job had to come out, again and again, and explore this new world.” Pendergast’s voice trailed off into the chill darkness.

A small sob escaped from the old lady. The room fell silent. Outside, the wind was slowly dying. A distant rumble of thunder sounded, like an afterthought. Finally, she spoke: “When the first lady was killed, I had no idea it was my Job. But then . . . Then hetold me. He was so excited, so happy. Hetold me about the world he’d found—as if he didn’t know I already knew of it. Oh, Mr. Pendergast, he didn’t mean to kill anyone, he really didn’t. He was just trying to play. I tried to explain to him, but he just didn’tunderstand —” She choked on a sob.

Pendergast waited a moment and then continued. “As he grew, you didn’t need to visit him as often. You brought him his food and supplies in bulk once or twice a week, I imagine, which would explain where he got the butter and sugar. By that time he was almost self-sufficient. The cave system was his home. He had taught himself a great deal over the years, skills that he needed to survive in the cave. But where he was most damaged was in the area of human morals. He didn’t know right from wrong.”

“I tried, oh, how Itried to explain those things to him!” Winifred Kraus burst out, rocking back and forth.

“There are some things that ca

The storm shook and rattled the house.

“How did his back become deformed?” Pendergast finally asked. “Was it just his cave existence? Or did he have a bad fall as a child, perhaps? Broken bones that healed badly?”

Winifred Kraus swallowed, recovered. “He fell when he was ten. I thought he would die. I wanted to get him to a doctor, but . . .”

Hazen suddenly spoke, his voice harsh with disgust, anger, disbelief, pain. “But why the scenes in the cornfields? What was that all about?”

Winifred only shook her head wonderingly. “I don’t know.”