A World of Speculation

A guy in his 20s sits in the back of the bus exchanging crime stories with two white-haired women, twins and identically dressed. Sitting toward the front of the bus, I hear his voice spinning yarns about his brothers’ and sisters’ run-ins with the criminal element, and the women respond with stories they’ve read in the newspapers and their opinions: On hearing that the jail was too full, one said, “They ought to stack them like cord wood.”