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Appendix B - Postscript – Thoughts from the author concerning the fates of Ruthie Burns and Mike Sinclair

I am writing these words a year after completing “The Outsider” and after having had the opportunity to reflect on the novel’s message and direction.

Over the winter of 2010-2011 several readers wrote me expressing opinions that the current version of the novel’s ending was unsatisfactory because I did not state what happened to Mike Sinclair and Ruthie Burns after they left the beach. What type of lives did they return to? What happened to their studies and their jobs? More importantly, how did their relationship develop now that they were alone and their families were out of their lives?

The truth is that I’m not really sure myself what exactly happened to Mike and Ruthie after they left the beach, or at least what happened to them in the long term. Here is what is I do know:

About an hour after the sunset they drove back to Mike’s apartment in silence. They spent the rest of the evening sitting together quietly. The next day they went for a hike. The following Monday they went back to class and returned to their jobs. As always, Mike emptied Sam’s plastic bucket of quarters into his backpack and stashed his daily loot in the trunk of his car.

Then what?

Over the summer and into the next year, the changes that Ruthie had noticed in Mike over the spring intensified. Although he rarely talked about it, she could tell that his hope for social justice and desire to understand what had happened to the US had changed into a visceral hatred of the entire political system and power structure. It was a quiet hatred, biding its time…waiting for the moment when circumstances would allow him to seek revenge. Specifically he envisioned storming corporate offices carrying a crow-bar and crushing the faces of the people he hated. As Ruthie foresaw her boyfriend’s future, Mike was destined to be part of the mob that will destroy the US as we currently know it.

So…was that indeed Mike’s future…to be a blood-thirsty revolutionary? That certainly was possible, but not as inevitable as Ruthie thought.

It was just as likely Mike could live out a much quieter, although not necessarily happier, existence. As the semester following his father’s death passed by, Mike’s hatred was tempered by the coins he was stealing every day. The weeks and months passed and Mike continued raiding his employer’s parking meters unabated. He had money, and to have money was to have a sense of empowerment. He hated the system, but he had found a way to beat it.

Mike became more and more determined to pursue a career in parking management. After all, it was “money for nothing and your chicks for free.” By his junior year he was taking business classes that he thought would help him buy or manage parking lots, and working on personal connections he would need to “break into” the business.

Over the year that followed his father’s death, Mike also became a better thief and con-artist. He learned how to convert and launder money, and to store his earnings out of sight of both the IRS and his girlfriend. I don’t know how long he kept his meter job, but I do know that he was never caught by either his employer or the campus police. Whatever money he stole he was able to keep, never suffering any consequences, at least in this life.

So what was Mike’s fate? What part of him won out, greed or hatred? I don’t know. I cannot write that next chapter of Mike’s life: I can only lay out two possibilities. I do not know what future faces the US, and without knowing that, I cannot continue the novel.

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I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.

Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so people are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them. (Ecclesiastes 9:11, 9:12)

Ruthie’s destiny will be tied to that of Mike. No matter what he does or where he goes, she will follow him. Perhaps many times over she will regret having made the promise to tie her existence to his, but for her that promise has the power of a religious oath and will never be broken. Her purpose in life is to stay with her partner, regardless of what path his life takes or how she feels about it. Periodically she will hope for a sign that he is getting tired of her, which would grant her the chance to escape into the Pacific Ocean and away from this “sucky life”. However, the sign she is hoping for will never come. Until he dies, Mike will always love her.

…and Ruthie will always belong to Mike, because life gave her no other choices.

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We are the children
the last generation
We are the ones they left behind
And I wonder when we are ever gonna change
Living under the fear till nothing else remains...
("We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)" - Single by Tina Turner from the album Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome - Released July 29, 1985 UK)

Ruthie and Mike are members of the “last generation”. Perhaps he wants children, but she definitely does not and will see to it that she never gets pregnant. Their family histories will end with their deaths, which is what Ruthie Burns is counting on.

After-all, extinction is inevitable. If the fossil record proves anything, it proves that...

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