Because of Winn-Dixie (7 page)

M
e 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.

S
ometimes, 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.”

“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.

T
he 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.