Rock Martin is a geologist from Indiana, Pennsylvania who explores the human spirit through his writing. A Penn State graduate, he depicts life’s challenges where the main struggle lies within. Rock enjoys fitness, camping, and hiking with his wife and young son, finding inspiration in nature and resilience.
“Shane! Shane! Where’s Shane?”
Jason’s desperate gaze swept through the busy front yard, the cold air unnoticed, his eyes burning from the smoke still billowing out of his home.
“Sir, please–”
“Shane!” His feet were moving again, and the blood trickling down his arm barely registered.
“Jason!”
His wife Stephanie and daughter Amanda had made it out; they were there on the sidewalk, just a few feet behind, wrapped in blankets, red and blue lights flashing across their faces.
But Shane.
Jason’s feet took him forward, towards the house, towards the burning, acrid heat. On the roof, men in thick Kevlar coats swung their axes into the shingles, as muffled voices rose above the crackle of the fire.
Three men burst through the front door a moment later, their faces blackened with soot. Between them was a smaller figure, hunched and limp.
“Shane!”
Jason raced to him, ignoring the voices, and wrapped his arms tight around Shane’s trembling body. Neither of them spoke. They huddled with Stephanie and Amanda, and together they watched their home disappear.
***
Jason’s sister opened her home to them, and they all found space between the spare room and the couch.
The second night after the fire, at midnight, Jason’s phone rang, jerking him awake. Fumbling through darkness and dreams, he managed to answer on the fifth ring.
“He-Hello?”
A voice on the other end began speaking. Jason’s forehead wrinkled as the words came through; his gut twisted and dropped deep into the Earth.
“Wha- Yes. Yes…”
Stephanie shot up beside him, but he couldn’t look at her.
“Jason?”
The phone slipped from Jason’s hand.
“What is it?”
Jason stared at nothing.
Stephanie shook him. “Jason.”
“Shane’s …” He licked his lips. “He’s…” The words got stuck in his throat, and he tried swallowing.
Stephanie’s head shook. “Shane’s sleeping in the next ro—.”
“He was at the house.”
She stopped. Everything stopped.
“He went back.” Jason’s words were a hoarse whisper. “He got trapped, crushed.” He looked at her. “Why did he go back?”
Stephanie leapt from the bed and hurried to the next room. Her cries filled the house a moment later. “He’s not here!”
Jason stared ahead, motionless.
***
Three days later, he sat in a borrowed suit, surrounded by flowers, listening to people tell him everything would be alright.
He turned to Stephanie. The almost sickly sweetness of too many lilies pierced the thick, stagnant air. “Why..? Was he looking for something?”
Stephanie pressed a tissue against her eyes. “Jason, stop it.”
Another guest offered condolences, a man Jason barely knew. He watched the man’s mouth move, but no sound reached him. Behind the man’s shoulder, he could see the house as it had been: the kitchen window, Shane’s bedroom, the chimney rising behind the roof.
Memories of all the corners, all the nooks and crannies, where something could be hidden flooded his mind. Where something might survive. His gaze veered away from the man, his body soon following. He pushed open the door and leaned against the railing, the night air cool on his face.
Something drew Shane back to the house. Something he was willing to risk his life for. What could Shane have been searching for?
Stephanie’s presence caressed him like a gentle breeze, her soft hand on his shoulder. She leaned against him, “This isn’t your fault. You were the best father you could be.”
“He went back to find something.” Jason finally spoke, his voice soft and faraway.
“How do you know?”
Jason’s hands gripped the railing, his knuckles white. His voice cracked, “I just know.”
Stephanie leaned in and sighed. “The insurance adjuster is coming at 8AM tomorrow. They’ll start clearing it after that.”
Jason looked at her suddenly. “Clearing it?”
“The house. They’ll start tearing it down and cleaning it up.”
He looked up into the clear night sky, searching, but it offered no answers, only memories.
Shane stood in the kitchen three months earlier, his hands twisting together awkwardly.
“Dad, can I talk to you about something?”
Jason glanced at the clock and then back at the email he was drafting. “Can it wait? It’s late.”
There was a silence, a pause, and Jason finally looked up, frustration creeping in at the delay.
“Well?” The sharp words hung between them, but still Shane didn’t say anything.
“It’s … never mind, you wouldn’t understand.”
Jason glanced back at his email. “I have to finish this.”
Shane’s shoulders dropped. He nodded once and walked out of the kitchen.
Stephanie’s soft hand pulled him back, and the tendrils of the memory faded away. Together, they headed back inside.
A line of guests waited, each with a story about Shane, or a warm hug.
Two hours later, the lights were out, but sleep didn’t come. Images of the burnt house, a skeleton after the destruction, were all he could see.
12:47 AM.
Seven hours until the adjuster. Seven hours until the house was opened and demolished. He slipped out of bed. He had to know.
The sharp, acrid odor stung his nose as he stood under a moonless night and stared at the burnt remains of his life, a lumpy mound of charred debris.
A few remaining studs roughly outlined the frame, like the stiff legs of a dead insect, and two rafters still hung, shreds of cloth and plastic dangling from them in the cool night air. Splintered boards and coiled metal rose from the rubble, jutting out in all directions, and behind them stood the chimney, blackened but otherwise defiant.
He ducked under the caution tape, chasing the darkness with his flashlight, and picturing the layout of the house, running through all the places Shane could have hidden something.
He paused, then stepped onto a cement slab that used to be the front door.
Seventeen years earlier, he’d carried Shane through the same opening for the first time. Shane was so small Jason could fit one hand behind his back. And his eyes, they were so wide, staring at everything. “Look at you,” he whispered, a smile stretching his lips. “Already trying to figure everything out.” His whole world had changed forever in that instant. Anything seemed possible, and he was sure he’d be a great father.
Shane had passed through the same doorway countless times since. Every day when he left for school. Each night after baseball practice. When Jason carried him home after his first night at the drive-ins. After winning the third-grade talent contest.
And that time the police escorted him home. He’d only taken some small items. Every kid tries to bend the rules a little. That’s what Jason told himself, anyway.
Just ahead, the frame of the family room entryway still stood, outlined in charred boards. Jason ran his fingers along the blackened surface, trying to feel the markings he’d carved into the wall to match Shane’s height each year.
Jason’s eyes pricked as his finger passed over each one, and memories filled his head. The way Shane filled out, and the way his proportions changed. The way he stood in awe of his growth after each mark.
Most of them were fun. Shane would stand against the wall, impatient for Jason to finish, then twist around to see how much he’d grown.
The last few were different. Shane wouldn’t stand still anymore. “What’s the point?” he’d asked once.
Jason had laughed it off. “The point is, you’re getting tall.”
Shane hadn’t smiled. “That’s not what I meant.”
Jason didn’t understand what he meant then. Standing in the ruins, he wondered if he understood now.
He moved some of the debris around with his feet, looking for something, anything. The hard edge of metal caught his foot. He slid his hand under a charred board and pulled out the square plaque from one of Shane’s baseball trophies, the lettering obscured by the soot. Maybe it was for his little league MVP award. Or maybe for his Junior High Conference Championship.
Jason turned it over in his hand. Shane had stopped caring about baseball long before Jason did. When Coach called to say Shane had missed the last five practices, Jason was shocked. “I just saw him playing catch in the backyard yesterday,” he’d said.
Jason’s stomach tightened.
The plaque slipped from his fingers and smashed against the cement.
He pushed on.
Ahead, debris had piled on top of a splintered board. He peered under the pile, shining his light into the opening. A crawlspace had formed, wrapping in a semicircle.
Jason stopped. The charcoal inside had been disturbed. Not by the collapse. There were fingerprints, or what looked like fingerprints, in the soot.
Jason lowered himself onto the cement and crawled through the opening, the flashlight in his mouth, a thick layer of charcoal coating his chest as he slid on the cement. His eyes flicked from side to side, scanning every crevice.
He slipped out the other side just as the mound of debris cracked and collapsed further.
He pushed himself to his feet, soot caking half his face and most of his clothes. A cloud of dust hung in the air, engulfing the beam of his flashlight.
Ahead was Shane’s room, now a littered field of charred wood and debris. Jason crept towards it and placed a hand on a standing beam for balance as he carefully moved his feet through the rubble. The scorched beam buckled and fell, sending a deafening crash echoing through the night as it landed.
He reached the foot of Shane’s room, his toes resting where the bedroom door once stood. In the shadows of the light and the thick dust, he almost caught the shape of a young boy staring back at him. He quickly blinked.
Behind him the remaining structure groaned, the weakened studs warping under the weight.
He slid his foot into the room, careful not to step on anything sharp. The flashlight jumped from corner to corner as Jason assessed the damage. A large box remained near the back corner, the frame of Shane’s dresser. Jason made his way through the debris, only to find that the drawers were burnt out. He peered into each hole, anyway. Nothing. Just like the last time he looked into Shane’s eyes, after another argument.
A few birds chirped in the distance. It would be dawn soon. Jason pressed on.
He moved through the rest of Shane’s room and out to the family room near the back of the house. He pressed his palm against a piece of door frame and stepped into the room just as his foot caught on debris and he pitched forward. The pile beneath shifted and slammed into one of the remaining beams, causing it to twist and scream as it tore loose from the rafters and crashed to the cement. The hanging rafters sank, catching another stud, stopping only a few feet above him. Jason froze, his breaths coming hard, pushing white vapor into the cool night air.
Jason scrambled away from the rafter, and for a moment he considered turning back. Stephanie was asleep less than a mile away, but she might wake to find him gone.
He rolled to his side and began pushing himself up, noticing a large red stain near his hand on the cement. Blood, Shane’s. His body quaked, his vision blurred. He took a deep breath.
“What were you looking for?” he whispered.
He pushed a pile of debris out of the way, kicking up a cloud of dust. Behind it his hands met firm resistance, and he fumbled with his flashlight, the fog of his breath thick in the beam. As the dust cleared, the pattern of the stone chimney came into view.
He scanned it up and down for a moment, the blocks remarkably intact. Then he pushed himself to his feet, using the corner of a stone for balance. The stone jiggled, like it had always been loose. Jason stared for a moment, then pulled harder at it. The stone wiggled free.
Jason’s hand disappeared into the opening, his fingers sliding against the coarse walls until they met something smooth.
A small tin lunchbox emerged, the dim light revealing a familiar design. It was Shane’s, maybe third or fourth grade, the one with the faded superhero on the lid. Shane had insisted on carrying it long after the other kids had switched to brown paper bags. Jason’s lips curled as the countless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches he’d stuffed into it came to mind.
He brushed the dust off, popped the latch, and found a folded paper inside, wrinkled and frayed.
Unfolding it, Jason found Shane’s third-grade report card. The lettering was faded, but a series of Bs and an A were still visible. The few sentences from Shane’s teacher were no longer legible.
Jason’s eyes fell on a scribbled note near the bottom, in bright ink, the handwriting his own.
He stared at the words until they blurred.
Shane, I’m so proud of you!
As he ran his thumb across the ink, the kitchen came back. Shane bursting through the door with the report card folded in half, holding it out like a trophy. Jason pulling him close. “We’re celebrating!”
Shane laughing and pushing away, running circles around the kitchen, his grin stretching the width of his face.
Jason lowered himself to the concrete, the lunchbox resting in his lap.
Somewhere along the way, Shane stopped bringing things home. At first it was report cards and trophies. Then stories. Then questions.
His memory drifted back to that night in the kitchen, Shane talking about something that had happened at school. Jason kept typing. “Uh huh.” Another keystroke. “Yeah.” More typing. Then silence. Jason hadn’t looked up.
He hadn’t noticed Shane had stopped talking. Until now.
Jason looked at the report card and ran his thumb over the faded note again.
Maybe Shane hadn’t stopped bringing things home.
Maybe Jason had stopped looking.
A beam groaned overhead.
Jason tucked the report card carefully back into the lunchbox and closed the lid. He held it against his chest and looked toward the place where Shane’s bedroom had been.
“I’m proud of you,” he whispered.
The words sounded strange in the empty house.
He said them again.
The lunchbox disappeared beneath his coat, and he turned toward the doorway.
Seventeen years earlier, he’d carried Shane through it.
This time, he carried what was left of him.