Kate DiCamillo: Because of Winn-Dixie

“Nine,” I told him.

“Nine,” said the preacher. “She drank. She drank beer. And whiskey. And wine. Sometimes, she couldn’t stop drinking. And that made me and your mama fight quite a bit. Number ten,” he said with a long sigh, “number ten, is that your mama loved you. She loved you very much.”

“But she left me,” I told him.

“She left us,” said the preacher softly. I could see him pulling his old turtle head back into his stupid turtle shell. “She packed her bags and left us, and she didn’t leave one thing behind.”

“Okay,” I said. I got up off the couch. Winn-Dixie hopped off, too. “Thank you for telling me,” I said.

I went right back to my room and wrote down all ten things that the preacher had told me. I wrote them down just the way he said them to me so that I wouldn’t forget them, and then I read them out loud to Winn-Dixie until I had them memorized. I wanted to know those ten things inside and out. That way, if my mama ever came back, I could recognize her, and I would be able to grab her and hold on to her tight and not let her get away from me again.

Winn-Dixie couldn’t stand to be left alone; we found that out real quick. If me and the preacher went off and left him by himself in the trailer, he pulled all the cushions off the couch and all the toilet paper off the roll. So we started tying him up outside with a rope when we left. That didn’t work either. Winn-Dixie howled until Samuel, Mrs. Detweller’s dog, started howling, too. It was exactly the kind of noise that people in an all adult trailer park do not like to hear.

“He just doesn’t want to be left alone,” I told the preacher. “That’s all. Let’s take him with us.” I could understand the way Winn-Dixie felt. Getting left behind probably made his heart feel empty.

After a while, the preacher gave in. And everywhere we went, we took Winn-Dixie. Even to church.

The Open Arms Baptist Church of Naomi isn’t a regular-looking church. The building used to be a Pick-It-Quick store, and when you walk in the front door, the first thing you see is the Pick-It-Quick motto. It’s written on the floor in little tiny red tiles that make great big letters that say “PICK PICK PICK QUICK QUICK QUICK.” The preacher tried painting over those tiles, but the letters won’t stay covered up, and so the preacher has just given up and let them be.

The other thing about the Open Arms that is different from other churches is there aren’t any pews. People bring in their own foldup chairs and lawn chairs, and so sometimes it looks more like the congregation is watching a parade or sitting at a barbecue instead of being at church. It’s kind of a strange church and I thought Winn-Dixie would fit right in.

But the first time we brought Winn-Dixie to the Open Arms, the preacher tied him outside the front door.

“Why did we bring him all the way here just to tie him up?” I asked the preacher.

“Because dogs don’t belong in church, Opal,” the preacher said. “That’s why.”

He tied Winn-Dixie up to a tree and said how there was lots of shade for him and that it ought to work out real good.

Well, it didn’t. The service started and there was some singing and some sharing and some praying, and then the preacher started preaching. And he wasn’t but two or three words into his sermon when there was a terrible howl coming from outside.

The preacher tried to ignore it.

“Today,” he said.

“Aaaaaarrooo,” said Winn-Dixie.

“Please,” said the preacher.

“Arrrroooowwww,” said Winn-Dixie back.

“Friends,” said the preacher.

“Arrruiiiiipppp,” wailed Winn-Dixie.

Everyone turned in their lawn chairs and foldup chairs and looked at one another.

“Opal,” said the preacher.

“Owwwwww,” said Winn-Dixie.

“Yes sir?” I said.

“Go get that dog!” he yelled.

“Yes sir!” I yelled back.

I went outside and untied Winn-Dixie and brought him inside, and he sat down beside me and smiled up at the preacher, and the preacher couldn’t help it; he smiled back. Winn-Dixie had that effect on him.

And so the preacher started in preaching again. Winn-Dixie sat there listening to it, wiggling his ears this way and that, trying to catch all the words. And everything would have been all right, except that a mouse ran across the floor.

The Open Arms had mice. They were there from when it was a Pick-It-Quick and there were lots of good things to eat in the building, and when the Pick-It-Quick became the Open Arms Baptist Church of Naomi, the mice stayed around to eat all the leftover crumbs from the potluck suppers. The preacher kept on saying he was going to have to do something about them, but he never did. Because the truth is, he couldn’t stand the thought of hurting anything, even a mouse.

Well, Winn-Dixie saw that mouse, and he was up and after him. One minute, everything was quiet and serious and the preacher was going on and on and on; and the next minute, Winn-Dixie looked like a furry bullet, shooting across the building, chasing that mouse. He was barking and his feet were skidding all over the polished Pick-It-Quick floor, and people were clapping and hollering and pointing. They really went wild when Winn-Dixie actually caught the mouse.

“I have never in my life seen a dog catch a mouse,” said Mrs. Nordley. She was sitting next to me.

“He’s a special dog,” I told her.

“I imagine so,” she said back.

Winn-Dixie stood up there in front of the whole church, wagging his tail and holding the mouse real careful in his mouth, holding onto him tight but not squishing him.

“I believe that mutt has got some retriever in him,” said somebody behind me. “That’s a hunting dog.”

Winn-Dixie took the mouse over to the preacher and dropped it at his feet. And when the mouse tried to get away, Winn-Dixie put his paw right on the mouse’s tail. Then he smiled up at the preacher. He showed him all his teeth. The preacher looked down at the mouse. He looked at Winn-Dixie. He looked at me. He rubbed his nose. It got real quiet in the Pick-It-Quick.

“Let us pray,” the preacher finally said, “for this mouse.”

And everybody started laughing and clapping. The preacher picked up the mouse by the tail and walked and threw it out the front door of the Pick-It-Quick, and everybody applauded again.

Then he came back and we all prayed together. I prayed for my mama. I told God how much she would have enjoyed hearing the story of Winn-Dixie catching that mouse. It would have made her laugh. I asked God if maybe I could be the one to tell her that story someday.

And then I talked to God about how I was lonely in Naomi because I didn’t know that many kids, only the ones from church. And there weren’t that many kids at the Open Arms, just Dunlap and Stevie Dewberry, two brothers who weren’t twins but looked like they were. And Amanda Wilkinson, whose face was always pinched up like she was smelling something real bad; and Sweetie Pie Thomas, who was only five years old and still mostly a baby. And none of them wanted to be my friend anyway because they probably thought I’d tell on them to the preacher for every little thing they did wrong; and then they would get in trouble with God and their parents. So I told God that I was lonely, even having Winn-Dixie.

And finally, I prayed for the mouse, like the preacher suggested. I prayed that he didn’t get hurt when he went flying out the door of the Open Arms Baptist Church of Naomi. I prayed that he landed on a nice soft patch of grass.

I spent a lot of time that summer at the Herman W. Block Memorial Library. The Herman W. Block Memorial Library sounds like it would be a big fancy place, but it’s not. It’s just a little old house full of books, and Miss Franny Block is in charge of them all. She is a very small, very old woman with short gray hair, and she was the first friend I made in Naomi.