LITERATURE: Stories for Late at Night – Technique

The gringo Thurston?  Si, senor.  I remember him well.  I was one of those who went with him on his trip into the hill country exploring for oil.  (p. 141)

So starts out Pieces of Silver, a short story by Brett Halliday, and this opening line explains better than I much of the story right there.  Thurston is missing, and the narrator is telling the reader what happened to him.  The difference in cultures, an American in Mexico, is a large part of the plot, and the first person narrator is able to tell us that Thurston was a disagreeable man whose scorn for the natives is palpable.  We find that on his trip, he eyed a man’s young daughter, Lolita, and the man, Simpson, is himself an American who has married a local Indian and raised a family there. 

Hitting upon both family and cultural traditions, Halliday presents us with a plot buildup where we begin to expect trouble from the very beginning–knowing, of course, that it will result in Thurston’s disappearance which we’re told from the very first sentence.  And the writing is intimate and inviting, as the father, Simpson, fearing for his daughter’s purity threatened by the lustful Thurston, sends for her betrothed to seal their intentions in a celebration:

Faster and more fast was the beat of the music,and Lolita circled faster and yet faster, stamping her right foot sharply, her eyes hold those of her lover, a strange quiver in every muscle of her young body that was bent backward like a drawn bow. (p. 151)

The conflict and arc build to climax:

But it ended suddenly.  Over the heads of the watchers, half a dozen American dollars clattered at Lolita’s feet. 

The music stopped.  Lolita looked down at the coins with round eyes, a flush of shame on her cheeks.  Ruoey Urregan whirled about, his face black with anger.  (p. 152)

Urregan, her betrothed, and the others want to kill the American, Thurston, for this insult, but they leave, and the following morning Thurston and his crew head out for the hills.  He is lured by the Indians on promises of locations of oil, and is never heard from again.  But the twist (and spoiler):  It was not Thurston, but Lolita’s own father who threw the coins, knowing that Thurston would be blamed and murdered.

Great little story with all the elements of intrigue and social conscience and drama.