Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo
For what seemed like a long time, me and Otis ran around trying to catch mice and gerbils and hamsters and snakes and lizards. We kept on bumping into each other and tripping over the animals, and Gertrude kept screaming, “Dog! Dog!”
Every time I caught something, I put it back in the first cage I saw; I didn’t care if it was the right cage or not. I just put it in and slammed the door. And the whole time I was chasing things, I was thinking that Otis must be some kind of snake charmer, the way he could play his guitar and make all the animals turn to stone. And then I thought, “This is silly.” I shouted over Winn-Dixie barking and Gertrude yelling. I said, “Play some more music, Otis.”
He looked at me for a minute. Then he started playing his guitar, and in just a few seconds, everything was quiet. Winn-Dixie was lying on the floor, blinking his eyes and smiling to himself and sneezing every now and then, and the mice and the gerbils and the rabbits and the lizards and the snakes that we hadn’t caught yet got quiet and sat still, and I picked them up one by one and put them back in their cages.
When I was all done, Otis stopped playing. He looked down at his boots. “I was just playing them some music. It makes them happy.”
“Yes sir,” I said. “Did they escape from their cages?”
“No,” Otis said. “I take them out. I feel sorry for them being locked up all the time. I know what it’s like, being locked up.”
“You do?” I said.
“I have been in jail,” Otis said. He looked up at me real quick and then looked back down at his boots.
“You have?” I said.
“Never mind,” said Otis. “Aren’t you here to sweep the floor?”
“Yes sir,” I told him.
He walked over to the counter and started digging through a pile of things, and finally, he came up with a broom.
“Here,” he said. “You should start sweeping.” Only he must have gotten confused. He was holding out his guitar to me, instead of the broom.
“With your guitar?” I asked.
He blushed and handed me the broom and I started to work. I am a good sweeper. I swept the whole store and then dusted some of the shelves. The whole time I worked, Winn-Dixie followed me, and Gertrude followed him, flying behind him and sitting on his head and his back and croaking real quiet to herself, “Dog, dog.”
When I was done, Otis thanked me. I left Gertrude’s Pets thinking about how the preacher probably wouldn’t like it very much that I was working for a criminal.
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.
??
“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.”
“Child,” said Gloria Dump, “I know that. I’m the one who put ’em there. I’m the one who drank what was in ’em.”
“My mama drank,” I whispered.
“I know it,” Gloria Dump said.
“The preacher says that sometimes she couldn’t stop drinking.”
“Mmmm-hmmm,” said Gloria again. “That’s the way it is for some folks. We get started and we can’t get stopped.”
“Are you one of those people?”
“Yes ma’am. I am. But these days, I don’t drink nothing stronger than coffee.”
“Did the whiskey and beer and wine, did they make you do the bad things that are ghosts now?”
“Some of them,” said Gloria Dump. “Some of them I would’ve done anyway, with alcohol or without it. Before I learned.”
“Learned what?”
“Learned what is the most important thing.”
“What’s that?” I asked her.
“It’s different for everyone,” she said. “You find out on your own. But in the meantime, you got to remember, you can’t always judge people by the things they done. You got to judge them by what they are doing now. You judge Otis by the pretty music he plays and how kind he is to them animals, because that’s all you know about him right now. All right?”
“Yes ma’am,” I said.
“And them Dewberry boys, you try not to judge them too harsh either, all right?”
“All right,” I said.
“All right then,” said Gloria Dump, and she turned and started walking away. Winn-Dixie nudged me with his wet nose and wagged his tail; when he saw I wasn’t going, he trotted after Gloria. I stayed where I was and studied the tree. I wondered if my mama, wherever she was, had a tree full of bottles; and I wondered if I was a ghost to her, the same way she sometimes seemed like a ghost to me.
The Herman W. Block Memorial Library’s air-conditioning unit didn’t work very good, and there was only one fan; and from the minute me and Winn-Dixie got in the library, he hogged it all. He lay right in front of it and wagged his tail and let it blow his fur all around. Some of his fur was pretty loose and blew right off of him like a dandelion puff. I worried about him hogging the fan, and I worried about the fan blowing him bald; but Miss Franny said not to worry about either thing, that Winn-Dixie could hog the fan if he wanted and she had never in her life seen a dog made bald by a fan.
Sometimes, when Miss Franny was telling a story, she would have a fit. They were small fits and they didn’t last long. But what happened was she would forget what she was saying. She would just stop and start to shake like a little leaf. And when that happened, Winn-Dixie would get up from the fan and sit right at Miss Franny Block’s side. He would sit up tall, protecting her, with his ears standing up straight on his head, like soldiers. And when Miss Franny stopped shaking and started talking again, Winn-Dixie would lick her hand and lie back down in front of the fan.
Whenever Miss Franny had one of her fits, it reminded me of Winn-Dixie in a thunderstorm. There were a lot of thunderstorms that summer. And I got real good at holding on to Winn-Dixie whenever they came. I held on to him and comforted him and whispered to him and rocked him, just the same way he tried to comfort Miss Franny when she had her fits. Only I held on to Winn-Dixie for another reason, too. I held on to him tight so he wouldn’t run away.
It all made me think about Gloria Dump. I wondered who comforted her when she heard those bottles knocking together, those ghosts chattering about the things she had done wrong. I wanted to comfort Gloria Dump. And I decided that the best way to do that would be to read her a book, read it to her loud enough to keep the ghosts away.
And so I asked Miss Franny. I said, “Miss Franny, I’ve got a grown-up friend whose eyes are going on her, and I would like to read her a book out loud. Do you have any suggestions?”
“Suggestions?” Miss Franny said. “Yes ma’am, I have suggestions. Of course, I have suggestions. How about Gone with the Wind?”
“What’s that about?” I asked her.
“Why,” said Miss Franny, “it’s a wonderful story about the Civil War.”
“The Civil War?” I said.
“Do not tell me you have never heard of the Civil War?” Miss Franny Block looked like she was going to faint. She waved her hands in front of her face.
“I know about the Civil War,” I told her. “That was the war between the South and the North over slavery.”
“Slavery, yes,” said Miss Franny. “It was also about states’ rights and money. It was a terrible war. My great-grandfather fought in that war. He was just a boy.”
“Your great-grandfather?”
“Yes ma’am, Littmus W. Block. Now there’s a story.”
Winn-Dixie yawned real big and lay down on his side, with a thump and a sigh. I swear he knew that phrase: “Now there’s a story.” And he knew it meant we weren’t going anywhere real soon.
“Go ahead and tell it to me, Miss Franny,” I said. And I sat down cross-legged next to Winn-Dixie. I pushed him and tried to get him to share the fan. But he pretended he was asleep. And he wouldn’t move.
I was all settled in and ready for a good story when the door banged and pinch-faced Amanda Wilkinson came in. Winn-Dixie sat up and stared at her. He tried out a smile on her, but she didn’t smile back and so he lay down again.
“I’m ready for another book,” Amanda said, slamming her book down on Miss Franny’s desk.
“Well,” said Miss Franny, “maybe you wouldn’t mind waiting. I am telling India Opal a story about my great-grandfather. You are, of course, more than welcome to listen. It will be just one minute.”
Amanda sighed a real big dramatic sigh and stared past me. She pretended like she wasn’t interested, but she was, I coul
“Come sit over here,” said Miss Franny.
“I’ll stand, thank you,” said Amanda.
“Suit yourself,” Miss Franny shrugged. “Now where was I? Oh, yes. Littmus. Littmus W. Block.”
Littmus W. Block was just a boy when the firing on Fort Sumter occurred,” Miss Franny Block said as she started in on her story.
“Fort Sumter?” I said.
“It was the firing on Fort Sumter that started the war,” said Amanda.
“Okay,” I said. I shrugged.
“Well, Littmus was fourteen years old. He was strong and big, but he was still just a boy. His daddy, Artley W. Block, had already enlisted, and Littmus told his mama that he could not stand by and let the South get beat, and so he went to fight, too.” Miss Franny looked around the library and then she whispered, “Men and boys always want to fight. They are always looking for a reason to go to war. It is the saddest thing. They have this abiding notion that war is fun. And no history lesson will convince them differently.
“Anyway, Littmus went and enlisted. He lied about his age. Yes ma’am. Like I said, he was a big boy. And the army took him, and Littmus went off to war, just like that. Left behind his mother and three sisters. He went off to be a hero. But he soon found out the truth.” Miss Franny closed her eyes and shook her head.
“What truth?” I asked her.
“Why, that war is hell,” Miss Franny said with her eyes still closed. “Pure hell.”
“Hell is a cuss word,” said Amanda. I stole a look at her. Her face was pinched up even more than usual.
“War,” said Miss Franny with her eyes still closed, “should be a cuss word, too.” She shook her head and opened her eyes. She pointed at me and then she pointed at Amanda. “You, neither of you, can imagine.”
“No ma’am!” Amanda and me said at exactly the same time. We looked real quick at each other and then back at Miss Franny.
“You cannot imagine. Littmus was hungry all the time. And he was covered with all manner of vermin; fleas and lice. And in the winter, he was so cold he thought for sure he would freeze to death. And in the summer, why there’s nothing worse than war in the summertime. It stinks so. And the only thing that made Littmus forget that he was hungry and itchy and hot or cold was that he was getting shot at. And he got shot at quite a bit. And he was nothing more than a child.”