Kate DiCamillo - Because of Winn-Dixie

When we got to Gloria Dump’s, I told her I had two surprises for her and asked which one did she want first, the small one or the big one.

“The small one,” said Gloria.

I handed her the Littmus Lozenge and she moved it around in her hands, feeling it.

“Candy?” she said.

“Yes ma’am,” I told her. “It’s called a Littmus Lozenge.”

“Oh Lord, yes. I remember these candies. My daddy used to eat them.” She unwrapped the Littmus Lozenge and put it in her mouth and nodded her head.

“Do you like it?” I asked her.

“Mmmm-hmmm.” She nodded her head slowly. “It taste sweet. But it also taste like people leaving.”

“You mean sad?” I asked. “Does it taste like sorrow to you?”

“That’s right,” she said. “It taste sorrowful but sweet. Now. What’s surprise number two?”

“A book,” I said.

“A book?”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “I’m going to read it out loud to you. It’s called Gone with the Wind . Miss Franny says it’s a great book. It’s about the Civil War. Do you know all about the Civil War?”

“I have heard it mentioned a time or two,” said Gloria, nodding her head and sucking on her Littmus Lozenge.

“It’s going to take us a long time to read this book,” I told her. “There are one thousand and thirty-seven pages.”

“Whoooeee,” said Gloria. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her hands on her stomach. “We best get started then.”

And so I read the first chapter of Gone with the Wind out loud to Gloria Dump. I read it loud enough to keep her ghosts away. And Gloria listened to it good. And when I was done, she said it was the best surprise she had ever had and she couldn’t wait to hear chapter two.

That night, I gave the preacher his Littmus Lozenge right before he kissed me good night.

“What’s this?” he said.

“It’s some candy that Miss Franny’s great-grandfather invented. It’s called a Littmus Lozenge.”

The preacher unwrapped it and put it in his mouth, and after a minute, he started rubbing his nose and nodding his head.

“Do you like it?” I asked him.

“It has a peculiar flavor . . .”

“Root beer?” I said.

“Something else.”

“Strawberry?”

“That, too. But there’s still something else. It’s odd.”

I could see the preacher getting further and further away. He was hunching up his shoulders and lowering his chin and getting ready to pull his head inside his shell.

“It almost tastes a little melancholy,” he said.

“ Melancholy ? What’s that?”

“Sad,” said the preacher. He rubbed his nose some more. “It makes me think of your mother.”

Winn-Dixie sniffed at the candy wrapper in the preacher’s hand.

“It tastes sad,” he said, and sighed. “It must be a bad batch.”

“No,” I told him. I sat up in bed. “That’s the way it’s supposed to taste. Littmus came back from the war and his whole family was dead. His daddy died fighting. And his mama and his sisters died from a disease and the Yankees burned his house down. And Littmus was sad, very sad, and what he wanted more than anything in the whole world was something sweet. So he built a candy factory and made Littmus Lozenges, and he put all the sad he was feeling into the candy.”

“My goodness,” said the preacher.

Winn-Dixie snuffed the candy wrapper out of the preacher’s hand and started chewing on it.

“Give me that,” I said to Winn-Dixie. But he wouldn’t give it up. I had to reach inside his mouth and pull it out. “You can’t eat candy wrappers,” I told him.

The preacher cleared his throat. I thought he was going to say something important, maybe tell me another thing that he remembered about my mama; but what he said was, “Opal, I had a talk with Mrs. Dewberry the other day. She said that Stevie says that you called him a bald-headed baby.”

“It’s true,” I said. “I did. But he calls Gloria Dump a witch all the time, and he calls Otis retarded. And once he even said that his mama said I shouldn’t spend all my time with old ladies. That’s what he said.”

“I think you should apologize,” said the preacher.

“Me?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “You. You tell Stevie you’re sorry if you said anything that hurt his feelings. I’m sure he just wants to be your friend.”

“I don’t think so,” I told him. “I don’t think he wants to be my friend.”

“Some people have a strange way of going about making friends,” he said. “You apologize.”

“Yes sir,” I said. Then I remembered Carson. “Daddy,” I said, “do you know anything about Amanda Wilkinson?”

“What kind of thing?”

“Do you know something about her and somebody named Carson?”

“Carson was her brother. He drowned last year.”

“He’s dead?”

“Yes,” said the preacher. “His family is still suffering a great deal.”

“How old was he?”

“Five,” said the preacher. “He was only five years old.”

“Daddy,” I said, “how could you not tell me about something like that?”

“Other people’s tragedies should not be the subject of idle conversation. There was no reason for me to tell you.”

“It’s just that I needed to know,” I said. “Because it helps explain Amanda. No wonder she’s so pinch-faced.”

“What’s that?” said the preacher.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Good night, India Opal,” the preacher said. He leaned over and kissed me, and I smelled the root beer and the strawberry and the sadness all mixed together on his breath. He patted Winn-Dixie on the head and got up and turned off the light and closed the door.

I didn’t go to sleep right away. I lay there and thought how life was like a Littmus Lozenge, how the sweet and the sad were all mixed up together and how hard it was to separate them out. It was confusing.

“Daddy!” I shouted.

After a minute, he opened the door and raised his eyebrows at me.

“What was that word you said? The word that meant sad?”

“Melancholy,” he said.

“Melancholy,” I repeated. I liked the way it sounded, like there was music hidden somewhere inside it.

“Good night now,” the preacher said.

“Good night,” I told him back.

I got up out of bed and unwrapped a Littmus Lozenge and sucked on it hard and thought about my mama leaving me. That was a melancholy feeling. And then I thought about Amanda and Carson. And that made me feel melancholy, too. Poor Amanda. And poor Carson. He was the same age as Sweetie Pie. But he would never get to have his sixth birthday party.

In the morning, me and Winn-Dixie went down to sweep the pet store, and I took a Littmus Lozenge for Otis.

“Is it Halloween?” Otis asked when I handed him the candy.

“No,” I said. “Why?”

“Well, you’re giving me candy.”

“It’s just a gift,” I told him. “For today.”

“Oh,” said Otis. He unwrapped the Littmus Lozenge and put it in his mouth. And after a minute, tears started rolling down his face.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Do you like it?” I asked him.

He nodded his head. “It tastes good, but it also tastes a little bit like being in jail.”

“Gertrude,” Gertrude squawked. She picked up the Littmus Lozenge wrapper in her beak and then dropped it and looked around. “Gertrude!” she screamed again.

“You can’t have any,” I told her. “It’s not for birds.” Then, real quick, before I lost my nerve, I said, “Otis, what were you in jail for? Are you a murderer?”