Kate DiCamillo - Because of Winn-Dixie

Sweetie Pie Thomas was waiting for me right out front. “I seen that,” she said. She stood there and sucked on her knuckle and stared at me.

“Seen what?” I said.

“I seen all them animals out of their cages and keeping real still. Is that man magic?” she asked.

“Kind of,” I told her.

She hugged Winn-Dixie around the neck. “Just like this grocery-store dog, right?”

“Right,” I said.

I started walking, and Sweetie Pie took her knuckle out of her mouth and put her hand in mine.

“Are you coming to my birthday party?” she asked.

“I surely am,” I told her.

“The theme is pink,” she said.

“I know it,” I told her.

“I gotta go,” she said all of a sudden. “I gotta go home and tell my mama about what I seen. I live right down there. In that yellow house. That’s my mama on the porch. You see her? She’s waving at you.”

I waved at the woman on the porch and she waved back, and I watched Sweetie Pie run off to tell her mama about Otis being a magic man. It made me think about my mama and how I wanted to tell her the story about Otis charming all the animals. I was collecting stories for her. I would also tell her about Miss Franny and the bear, and about meeting Gloria Dump and believing for just a minute that she was a witch. I had a feeling that these were the kind of stories my mama would like, the kind that would make her laugh out loud, the way the preacher said she liked to laugh.

Me and Winn-Dixie got into a daily routine where we would leave the trailer early in the morning and get down to Gertrude’s Pets in time to hear Otis play his guitar music for the animals. Sometimes, Sweetie Pie snuck in for the concert, too. She sat on the floor and wrapped her arms around Winn-Dixie and rocked him back and forth like he was a big old teddy bear. And then when the music was over, she would walk around trying to pick out which pet she wanted; but she always gave up and went home, because the only thing she really wanted was a dog like Winn-Dixie. After she was gone, I would sweep and clean up and even arrange some of Otis’s shelves, because he did not have an eye for arranging things and I did. And when I was done, Otis would write down my time in a notebook that he had marked on the outside, “One red leather collar, one red leather leash.” And the whole time, he did not in any way ever act like a criminal.

After working at Gertrude’s Pets, me and Winn-Dixie would go over to the Herman W. Block Memorial Library and talk to Miss Franny Block and listen to her tell us a story. But my favorite place to be that summer was in Gloria Dump’s yard. And I figured it was Winn-Dixie’s favorite place to be, too, because when we got up to the last block before her house, Winn-Dixie would break away from my bike and start to run for all he was worth, heading for Gloria Dump’s backyard and his spoonful of peanut butter.

Sometimes, Dunlap and Stevie Dewberry would follow me. They would holler, “There goes the preacher’s daughter, visiting the witch.”

“She’s not a witch,” I told them. It made me mad the way they wouldn’t listen to me and kept on believing whatever they wanted to believe about Gloria Dump.

One time Stevie said to me, “My mama says you shouldn’t be spending all your time cooped up in that pet shop and at that library, sitting around talking with old ladies. She says you should get out in the fresh air and play with kids your own age. That’s what my mama says.”

“Oh, lay off her,” Dunlap said to Stevie. Then he turned to me. “He don’t mean it,” he said.

But I was already mad. I shouted at Stevie. I said, “I don’t care what your mama says. She’s not my mama, so she can’t tell me what to do.”

“I’m going to tell my mama you said that,” shouted Stevie, “and she’ll tell your daddy and he’ll shame you in front of the whole church. And that pet shop man is retarded and he was in jail and I wonder if your daddy knows that.”

“Otis is not retarded,” I said. “And my daddy knows that he was in jail.” That was a lie. But I didn’t care. “And you can go ahead and tell on me if you want, you big bald-headed baby.”

I swear, it about wore me out yelling at Dunlap and Stevie Dewberry every day; by the time I got to Gloria Dump’s yard, I felt like a soldier who had been fighting a hard battle. Gloria would make me a peanut-butter sandwich straight off and then she would pour me a cup of coffee with half coffee and half milk and that would refresh me.

“Why don’t you play with them boys?” Gloria asked me.

“Because they’re ignorant,” I told her. “They still think you’re a witch. It doesn’t matter how many times I tell them you’re not.”

“I think they are just trying to make friends with you in a roundabout way,” Gloria said.

“I don’t want to be their friend,” I said.

“It might be fun having them two boys for friends.”

“I’d rather talk with you,” I said. “They’re stupid. And mean. And they’re boys.”

Gloria would shake her head and sigh, and then she would ask me what was going on in the world and did I have any stories to tell her. And I always did.

Sometimes, I told Gloria the story Miss Franny Block had just told me. Or I imitated Otis tapping his pointy-toed boots and playing for all the animals, and that always made her laugh. And sometimes, I made up a story and Gloria Dump would listen to it all the way through from beginning to end. She told me she used to love to read stories, but she couldn’t anymore because her eyes were so bad.

“Can’t you get some really strong glasses?” I asked her.

“Child,” she said, “they don’t make glasses strong enough for these eyes.”

One day, when the storytelling was done, I decided to tell Gloria that Otis was a criminal. I thought maybe I should tell an adult about it, and Gloria was the best adult I knew.

“Gloria?” I said.

“Mmmm-hmmm,” she said back.

“You know Otis?”

“I don’t know him. But I know what you tell me ’bout him.”

“Well, he’s a criminal. He’s been in jail. Do you think I should be afraid of him?”

“What for?”

“I don’t know. For doing bad things, I guess. For being in jail.”

“Child,” said Gloria, “let me show you something.” She got up out of her chair real slow and took hold of my arm. “Let’s the two of us walk all the way to the back of this yard.”

“Okay,” I said.

We walked and Winn-Dixie followed right behind us. It was a huge yard and I had never been all the way back in it. When we got to a big old tree, we stopped.

“Look at this tree,” Gloria said.

I looked up. There were bottles hanging from just about every branch. There were whiskey bottles and beer bottles and wine bottles all tied on with string, and some of them were clanking against each other and making a spooky kind of noise. Me and Winn-Dixie stood and stared at the tree, and the hair on top of his head rose up a little bit and he growled deep in his throat.

Gloria Dump pointed her cane at the tree.

“What you think about this tree?”

I said, “I don’t know. Why are all those bottles on it?”

“To keep the ghosts away,” Gloria said.

“What ghosts?”

“The ghosts of all the things I done wrong.”

I looked at all the bottles on the tree. “You did that many things wrong?” I asked her.

“Mmmm-hmmm,” said Gloria. “More than that.”

“But you’re the nicest person I know,” I told her.

“Don’t mean I haven’t done bad things,” she said.

“There’s whiskey bottles on there,” I told her. “And beer bottles.”