Af­ter an ear­ly-morn­ing walk I stop at a road­side fruit stall, at­tract­ed by its di­verse dis­play of fruits and veg­eta­bles. Big yel­low ba­nanas hang in bunch­es. No one is around. I call out. No an­swer.A man jog­ging by says breath­less­ly, "Some­times he's across the road there."I cross the road, not know­ing what "he" looks like. I ask a man sit­ting on a rail­ing if he knows where the fruit ven­dor is. He tells me to look for a man in a white vest.

There is no sign of such a man, but even­tu­al­ly one ap­pears through the door­way of a build­ing. Read­ing the ques­tion on my face, he mo­tions to me to cross the road and we walk to­geth­er to the stall.On a ta­ble, a Bible lies open at Ec­cle­si­astes. Maybe he is some­one who comes qui­et­ly in the morn­ing, sets up for work, reads his "dai­ly wis­dom" and leaves the page open to re­mind him of the mes­sage. He does have an old­er, wise feel about him–ob­ser­vant ea­gle eyes and a silent pres­ence. Up to now we haven't said a word to each oth­er.

As I reach for a bunch of hang­ing ba­nanas, he tells me "Put it back," and points to some loose ba­nanas ly­ing on the counter. They re­mind me of the In­cred­i­ble Hulk–so large that the skins of some of them are split­ting."Them is $7 a pound," he says, mo­tion­ing his head to­ward the hang­ing ba­nanas. And then to the big coun­ter­top ones: "And these is $5 a pound and they self ripe."He in­forms me that those that re­main on the bunch have been treat­ed with chem­i­cals and the self-ripe ones that are not on the bunch are chem­i­cal-free.