This chapter has turned out to be longer than I thought. I'll try to keep working on pieces of it until I get done.
The hubbub of the slave market had faded into dull silence. The last of the slaves had been bought more than twenty minutes ago, and the final payments had been made. Walters was the last to pay for his purchases. As he returned from the business office, he met Tyrone and the two other female slaves he had purchased that day. All of them stood near the rope at the edge of the stage. Maria stood a little apart from them, her eyes glazed over with sadness. Tears welled up on the edges of her eyes.
Walters and Tyrone began to move towards the exit. The other women followed obediently, but Maria did not. After a few steps, Walters walked back over to her. “Move, slave!” he bellowed, grabbing her arm and giving her a harsh shove towards the exit.
Maria quietly obeyed, mindlessly lifting one foot and then the other. She walked for what seemed to be a vast distance before she arrived at the street that ran in front of the market. By now, the setting sun produced elongated shadows that made everything seem menacing and evil. Two vehicles awaited Walters: his coach and an open, unpainted, rickety cart.
Without a word, Tyrone led the women to the cart and ordered them to climb in. He did not help them, even though the step up was great. A thin layer of old, moldy straw covered the bed of the cart, and Maria did the best she could to find a comfortable way of sitting on the appalling surface. Just as she had gotten seated, Tyrone began to chain the three women together using a strong iron chain. He wrapped each woman’s wrist to the other in a figure-eight pattern before moving on to handcuff the next one in a similar fashion. Once all three women were joined together, he ran the chain through a ring attached to the front of the cart bed. He locked it with a padlock. There would be no escaping on the journey.
Hopping over to the driver’s seat of the cart, Tyrone cracked his whip over the two horses that pulled the cart, and off they sped. They moved at an amazingly fast speed. Walters and Tyrone were apparently in a hurry to get as soon as possible. It was a bumpy, noisy ride. At any moment, it seemed as if they would have been thrown out of the cart if they had not been chained to it. Maria wondered more than once if the cart bed itself might give way, causing her to be dragged along the ground as Tyrone unknowingly sped on.
How long the journey took, Maria could not remember, but she knew that it was almost dark by the time the cart mercifully rattled to a halt in front of a crude wooden structure with one door and no windows. It looked as if it were built as a small tool shed, but it had been converted into a prison for new slaves. A single lantern hung by the door provided the only nearby light. A lone man with missing teeth guarded at the entrance.
Tyrone produced a key from his pocket, unlocked the padlock, and forced all three of the still-chained women into the shack. He undid their chains, warned them not to try to escape or they would shot, and left, closing the door behind him. With an ominous click, they heard the same padlock that had held them to the cart now seal them into their jail.
In the dim light that was available before the door closed, neither Maria nor the women noticed any furniture. The floor consisted of about six inches of packed straw, and one by one, the women found a comfortable place to lie down. The other two women fell asleep quickly, but sleep eluded Maria for several hours as she wrestled with the despair of being separated from Alejandro and Emilia.
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