Buffalo Nickel by Salas Floyd

Author:Salas, Floyd
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arte Publico Press
Published: 1992-03-10T16:00:00+00:00

5

When the Reno cabdriver leaned across the front seat of his yellow cab and looked at us, I knew we were going to get hustled. I turned on the wide concrete stairs of the courthouse toward the hotel to avoid the guy. But he pulled the cab up and stopped next to me on the sidewalk and, poking his head over the roof of the cab, shouted, “Hey! Going to get married?”

“Yes,” Velva answered before I could say anything.

“I can take you to a nice place,” the cabbie said.

Irritated, I said, “We haven’t decided yet,” and saw the guy frown. Thinking I’d gotten him, I kept on walking when Velva said, “Oh, let’s go with him and get it over with, Floyd.”

“He might try to hustle us,” I said in a low voice, noticing the cold sore on her lip again. I’d first seen it when we caught the Greyhound Bus at ten in the morning on San Pablo in Oakland, only four blocks from her house. It reminded me of the sore on my mother’s lip in the coffin. Velva turned her face slightly away and said, “What can he do? He’s got a meter in there. Let’s ask him to take us straight to a minister. Come on, Floyd!” She tugged on my arm.

“How much to a place to get married?” I asked, playing it safe, and the cabby stared at me for a moment with light, glittering eyes. He had no hat, sandy hair, a hard, lined face, and was probably in his thirties. Then he grinned as if he thought it was funny that I didn’t trust him and said, “Two bucks round trip.”

Velva nodded at me and I said, “Okay,” and opened the door of the cab for her. But as soon as the driver made a u-turn, crossed the bridge and turned up the first street next to the river and started heading up into the low hills of the residential section, I said, “My brother drives cab in Oakland.” I didn’t want the guy to think he could take advantage of me just because he thought I was a kid. I’d made enough mistakes already.

“Oh, yeah,” the cabby said and glanced back at me, but didn’t grin this time. He flicked his thumb at the row of big houses on the low hills on the other side of the river, and said, “Every house is owned by a millionaire. Reno’s got more of them than any other city its size in the world.” I began to relax a little, confident he wouldn’t try to get more than the two bucks.

“How would you like to move into one of those, Floyd?” Velva asked and smiled at me. She was so beautiful with her huge blue eyes and golden hair curling in a page boy over the rich burgundy of her coat, I squeezed her hand.

“You look good enough to be a millionaire’s wife,” I said, not caring if the cabby heard. She was dressed

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