Ryan's burial, when they finally got round to it, was a tedious affair that took far too long. There was an argument about how deep Ryan's grave had to be, and all but one of the friends had been city dwellers all their lives and had no idea how to handle a spade.
'Well, what you'll need first is an actual spade for digging soil, not a coal shovel,' Jack said, wielding the rusted, unwieldy relic they procured from someone's shed. 'The best technique for digging is to lay the spade's edge to the ground then to step down on to the blade to push it into the soil. That way you can let your body weight do the hard work for you without straining your arms and back. I think it would be a good idea to cut the turf into strips first using the spade which means it can be peeled back to let you get at the earth then can be replaced afterwards.
'You need to pick a different site though,' Jack said, looking around. 'While it might look nice to put the grave under this willow tree, there's going to be too many roots and they'll be too hard to cut through. I think we should pick somewhere else where the ground would be softer like the middle of the lawn or a flower bed.'
The others looked at Jack with an expression of outrage or surprise at how he had the nerve to interrupt their ritual.
'Whoa, whoa, whoa - I'm sorry, who made you the boss?' demanded Sarah.
'Who the hell do you think you are, preaching all that rubbish to us?' Jenny screeched. 'Listen to you chat all that shit like a know-it-all, what is your problem?'
'Look, no-one asked you, Jack, and I've never heard such rubbish in my life. We told you that we decided to dig the grave here and that's what we'll do, and we'll do it the way we like,' Matt shouted. 'Now you can either help make yourself useful or piss off.'
'Fucking hell Jack, what are you playing at? Give the spade back and shut up. I'm embarrassed for you, mate,' Nick said, grinning.
'You're being so disrespectful right now,' Emma said, covering her mouth and shaking her head at him.
'You're being really ignorant right now, Jack. We've come to bury our friend and you're trying to get in the way of that and show off by saying all these things,' Jane said.
'He's… got a point,' Emily said, but was cut over by Sarah. You're being pretty hurtful now, at a time like this. I don't think you realise how hurtful you're being right now.'
'What… but I…' Jack trailed off, looking at each of the faces that turned against him. 'But it's true!'
'What makes you such an expert, Jack? I've been dying to ask this for some time,' said Andy.
'Er, my actual experience of handling a spade. Back home we did some landscaping, digging up rocks, growing vegetables, digging out a pond and an irrigation ditch in our back field,' he replied.
They scoffed and snorted. 'Sure, perhaps you can be in charge of shovelling shit now,' said Matt. The others laughed.
'So you didn't dig graves,' Katie said, flatly.
'Jack, perhaps you should give the spade back and leave this one be,' said Joe.
'Why don't you get out of the way, Jack? Listen to you go on like you know all about digging graves now. You're so awkward, you're such a geek. The way you said all that shit was so uncool. You're so embarrassing,' Jenny scolded as she laid in with the approval of the whole group behind her.
Jack was stunned, bewildered at how they all turned on him for no reason that he could fathom. Hot tears sprang up. 'This doesn't make sense. I'm right, I'm objectively right, and I'm just trying to help so we can do this right – for Ryan.'
Jenny went to snatch the shovel out of his hands but Jack held on tight.
'LET GO!' Jenny screeched in his face as though he were a misbehaving child. Matt came up behind him and wrenched the shovel from his hands. Jack could tell Matt felt big and powerful for doing so. Even Joe sniggered along with the rest of them at Jack's blunder and his humiliation while he turned his back to the accusation of betrayal from Jack's stare.
Jack stormed off to the house as the tears came. He desperately tried to hold them back but they were unstoppable. They burned and bubbled up uncontrollably. It was the shock. It was the surprise of them all turning on him and the acute anguish of his embarrassment. Above all, it was the injustice of it all that tore him up with such frustration.
'You're all wrong! You idiots!' Jack screeched into his palms. 'How could you – when we're all getting together to bury Ryan. Idiots! Idiots!' Jack caught sight of the mess of his tear-streaked face in a mirror. 'You idiot,' he said.
From an upstairs window that had view of the lawn Jack watched the others as they set about busying themselves with their task while he sniffed back stinging tears, alone, ashamed and in a bitter fury from the shadows and prayed they wouldn't look up and see him. The window was ajar and he could just about make out what they were saying.
They tried to dig in the place they were fixated upon. The lads took turns to smack the coal shovel's tip down onto the turf as hard as they could. They twisted and wedged the tool down with all the strength in their arms as they heaved and struggled with the effort of grinding the blunt, curved edge down into the grass. They managed about two or three minutes each of this as they gouged out one small chunk of garden at a time before they exhausted themselves and passed the shovel on.
They seemed to make it into a contest to show off who had the most strength and stamina as they laboured away in their task of doing it wrong; a competition of who could do it wrong and waste their time the most. The girls stood and watched. They pointed and told the boys what they thought should do.
After some time, the diggers ran up against the topmost roots of the tree, a couple of inches beneath the surface. The boys stubbornly persevered in their task as they smacked the coal shovel down against the roots. Jack even saw some of them attempt to swing the tool like an axe as they walloped and hacked the curved, flat edge of the blade down onto the stubborn, unyielding wood. There were too many roots and they were too hard to cut through.
After some time of this, someone had the bright idea of picking a new site, where the ground would be softer. Each of them rushed to chip in and repeat what the previous person had just said, to claim part of the idea as their own. They chose the flowerbed over a spot in the middle of the lawn.
Jack saw how, arms exhausted and backs aching, they began to dig into the dirt anew by hitting it with the coal shovel.
It was dark when they finished, and by the light of a fire, candles and a spliff, they lowered Ryan's body down into the shallow, uneven, lumpy grave, wrapped in a clean white bedsheet.
They said their goodbyes and sang a humming, droning song in a ritual they made up as they went along, guided into a meditative trance by a Bhuna pipe. They circled the grave in a procession, candles tracing their yellow glow through the air, and they let the white tear-drops of candle wax drip down over the mound of soil. Their wordless, freeform hymn reverberated and shifted pitch in harmony around the group.
At the end, the group sat around the fire, huddled together with all tensions forgotten, except for Jack.