Strange Day in Oakland

I had one odd experience while I worked in Oakland (see Last Train Out of Oakland). Most days I didn't have use of a car so I would take a combination of buses and Bart from SF to the school. Some days I would walk from BART but if I was in a hurry there was a bus that I would take after work.

I had somehow gotten walking pneumonia(probably from the stress of the job). It went away after two weeks but I had a really bad cough that hung on. One particularly awful Friday I was on the bus headed back to BART to go home. I was in my usual dark mood and coughing away. It was one of those loud, hacky coughs that drive everyone around crazy.

The bus was empty except for me and a few people at the front. I was sitting toward the back on one of the sideways seats when this down and out looking guy ambled on. He was an older African American guy, probably in his sixties, wearing threadbare clothes. He also had a tall nicely made walking stick. he sat in a seat near the door a few seats away from me.

I was more or less lost in my head coughing as usual, but I did notice him staring at me briefly. I went on coughing, but after a few minutes I heard a humming. I looked up and this man had his eyes closed and he was humming something with an arm wrapped around the stick.

After a few minutes he looked directly at me, then closed his eyes again. This time he rubbed the stick with his left hand a couple of times then put his right hand out flat palm up. He hummed again while waving his left hand over the outstretched hand. Then he acted as though he was pulling something out of the right  hand. Then he’d act as though he was flinging whatever he’d grasped out the window. This stopped after a few minutes and when I looked at him again he was leaning back in his seat with his eyes closed.

After a few minutes I got up to leave. As I hit the top step the man opened his and he stared right at ; I got a chill. Then he spoke in a clear loud voice. “It will be gone.” He smiled at me and I half smiled back and walked off the bus. At the time I just chalked it up to one of those odd experiences that often happen in a big city.

But two days later  I was out with some friends and one of them said “are you feeling better? It sounds like your cough is gone anway.” I realized that not only had I not coughed since the bus but I hadn’t even taken any of the cough medicine I had been guzzling.  And then I remembered the man had started his ritual right after one of my coughing jags. To this day I don’t know if losing the cough was coincidence, some sort of psychological placebo or a mystical treatment but I think about that man often and how much I dismissed him at the time.