Kate DiCamillo - Because of Winn-Dixie

The preacher looked at Winn-Dixie. He looked at his ribs and his matted-up fur and the places where he was bald. The preacher’s nose wrinkled up. Like I said, the dog smelled pretty bad.

Winn-Dixie looked up at the preacher. He pulled back his lips and showed the preacher all of his crooked yellow teeth and wagged his tail and knocked some of the preacher’s papers off the table. Then he sneezed and some more papers fluttered to the floor.

“What did you call this dog?” the preacher asked.

“Winn-Dixie,” I whispered. I was afraid to say anything too loud. I could see that Winn-Dixie was having a good effect on the preacher. He was making him poke his head out of his shell.

“Well,” said the preacher. “He’s a stray if I’ve ever seen one.” He put down his pencil and scratched Winn-Dixie behind the ears. “And a Less Fortunate, too. That’s for sure. Are you looking for a home?” the preacher asked, real soft, to Winn-Dixie.

Winn-Dixie wagged his tail.

“Well,” the preacher said. “I guess you’ve found one.”

I started in on Winn-Dixie right away, trying to clean him up. First, I gave him a bath. I used the garden hose and some baby shampoo. He stood still for it, but I could tell he didn’t like it. He looked insulted, and the whole time, he didn’t show me his teeth or wag his tail once. After he was all washed and dried, I brushed him good. I used my own hairbrush and worked real hard at all the knots and patches of fur stuck together. He didn’t mind being brushed. He wiggled his back, like it felt pretty good.

The whole time I was working on him, I was talking to him. And he listened. I told him how we were alike. “See,” I said, “you don’t have any family and neither do I. I’ve got the preacher, of course. But I don’t have a mama. I mean I have one, but I don’t know where she is. She left when I was three years old. I can’t hardly remember her. And I bet you don’t remember your mama much either. So we’re almost like orphans.”

Winn-Dixie looked straight at me when I said that to him, like he was feeling relieved to finally have somebody understand his situation. I nodded my head at him and went on talking.

“I don’t even have any friends, because I had to leave them all behind when we moved here from Watley. Watley’s up in north Florida. Have you ever been to north Florida?”

Winn-Dixie looked down at the ground, like he was trying to remember if he had.

“You know what?” I said. “Ever since we moved here, I’ve been thinking about my mama extra-extra hard, more than I ever did when I was in Watley.”

Winn-Dixie twitched his ears and raised his eyebrows.

“I think the preacher thinks about my mama all the time, too. He’s still in love with her; I know that because I heard the ladies at the church in Watley talking about him. They said he’s still hoping she’ll come back. But he doesn’t tell me that. He won’t talk to me about her at all. I want to know more about her. But I’m afraid to ask the preacher; I’m afraid he’ll get mad at me.”

Winn-Dixie looked at me hard, like he was trying to say something.

“What?” I said.

He stared at me.

“You think I should make the preacher tell me about her?”

Winn-Dixie looked at me so hard he sneezed.

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

When I was done working on him, Winn-Dixie looked a whole lot better. He still had his bald spots, but the fur that he did have cleaned up nice. It was all shiny and soft. You could still see his ribs, but I intended to feed him good and that would take care of that. I couldn’t do anything about his crooked yellow teeth because he got into a sneezing fit every time I started brushing them with my toothbrush, and I finally had to give up. But for the most part, he looked a whole lot better, and so I took him into the trailer and showed him to the preacher.

“Daddy,” I said.

“Hmmm,” he said. He was working on a sermon and kind of muttering to himself.

“Daddy, I wanted to show you the new Winn-Dixie.”

The preacher put down his pencil and rubbed his nose, and finally, he looked up.

“Well,” he said, smiling real big at Winn-Dixie, “well, now. Don’t you look handsome.”

Winn-Dixie smiled back at the preacher. He went over and put his head in the preacher’s lap.

“He smells nice, too,” said the preacher. He rubbed Winn-Dixie’s head and looked into his eyes.

“Daddy,” I said, real quick before I lost all my nerve, “I’ve been talking to Winn-Dixie.”

“Is that right?” the preacher said; he scratched Winn-Dixie’s head.

“I’ve been talking to him and he agreed with me that, since I’m ten years old, you should tell me ten things about my mama. Just ten things, that’s all.”

The preacher stopped rubbing Winn-Dixie’s head and held real still. I could see him thinking about pulling his head back into his shell.

“One thing for each year I’ve been alive,” I told him. “Please.”

Winn-Dixie looked up at the preacher and kind of gave him a nudge with his nose.

The preacher sighed. He said to Winn-Dixie, “I should have guessed you were going to be trouble.” Then he looked at me. “Come on, Opal,” he said. “Sit down. And I will tell you ten things about your mama.”

“One,” said the preacher. We were sitting on the couch and Winn-Dixie was sitting between us. Winn-Dixie had already decided that he liked the couch a lot. “One,” said the preacher again. Winn-Dixie looked at him kind of hard. “Your mama was funny. She could make just about anybody laugh.”

“Two,” he said. “She had red hair and freckles.”

“Just like me,” I said.

“Just like you,” the preacher nodded.

“Three. She liked to plant things. She had a talent for it. She could stick a tire in the ground and grow a car.”

Winn-Dixie started chewing on his paw, and I tapped him on the head to make him stop.

“Four,” said the preacher. “She could run fast. If you were racing her, you couldn’t ever let her get a head start, because she would beat you for sure.”

“I’m that way, too,” I said. “Back home, in Watley, I raced Liam Fullerton, and beat him, and he said it wasn’t fair, because boys and girls shouldn’t race each other to begin with. I told him he was just a sore loser.”

The preacher nodded. He was quiet for a minute.

“I’m ready for number five,” I told him.

“Five,” he said. “She couldn’t cook. She burned everything, including water. She had a hard time opening a can of beans. She couldn’t make head nor tail of a piece of meat. Six.” The preacher rubbed his nose and looked up at the ceiling. Winn-Dixie looked up, too. “Number six is that your mama loved a story. She would sit and listen to stories all day long. She loved to be told a story. She especially liked funny ones, stories that made her laugh.” The preacher nodded his head like he was agreeing with himself.

“What’s number seven?” I asked.

“Let’s see,” he said. “She knew all the constellations, every planet in the nighttime sky. Every last one of them. She could name them. And point them out. And she never got tired of looking up at them.

“Number eight,” said the preacher, with his eyes closed, “was that she hated being a preacher’s wife. She said she just couldn’t stand having the ladies at church judge what she was wearing and what she was cooking and how she was singing. She said it made her feel like a bug under a microscope.”

Winn-Dixie lay down on the couch. He put his nose in the preacher’s lap and his tail in mine.

“Ten,” said the preacher.