I agree pretty much with Brian G's assessment. anyway, here's my tuppence worth.
Calloway stared at the empty staging area of Fort Battery. The halved tree trunks forming the perimeter fence towered behind the platform, their points spearing the endless blue haze above. No one was going to get over those, but these fool n****** were tenacious and he’d not put it past them to start burrowing. After all, there were tales of the Volta ones living underground.
It wasn’t the slaves he was worried about, anyway; the new Administrator was an exacting son of a bitch who’d made demands on the layout of Fort Battery way before he was due to arrive. If the stories from Augusta were to be believed, the young ex-Union Captain was as likely to give him thirty strips just as much as the negroes. Not that he resented the appointment of the Administrator; he could do without the responsibility himself - the pleasure of flogging these animals had long worn off and now he just wished they’d behave - but since the law for the handling of human stock had been standardised, things were…what a dad-rat mess. {Nope. Way too tell-y., too distant from the character. Atmosphere can be powerful in itself, without the 'internal' thoughts reveal.}
He poured over the list of instructions sent by Captain Rocha some weeks ago. Everything had to be right. By all accounts the young captain was a ruthless *******, as likely to put him to the lash as any negro. He glanced up at the severed tree trunks again. The breeze outside the barricade stirred up dust clouds that billowed over the top like a Springfield’s puff, but inside the fence was dead calm. It was as if the wind dare not blow over the (XXX, bit of a description of the fort here).
Maybe the change of scenery would calm them when they started arriving.
He laughed at the thought…
A bad sign...
He reached for a coffee cup. In a few hours he would know if the auction site passed muster. In a few hours he would fix his face and set his jaw. In a few hours he would meet Lázaro Rocha.
Lázaro. What kind of a Christian names their son Lázaro?
