“She ain’t no witch,” Stevie said. He shook his bald head. He looked kind of disappointed.
“Naw,” said Dunlap. “She ain’t. If she was, she would’ve turned us into toads by now.” He grinned.
“I could have told you that she wasn’t a witch. Witches don’t exist,” said Amanda. “They are just myths.”
“All right now,” said Gloria. “What happened was we got through all them witchy things and then Franny said, why don’t we have a little music while we wait for you two to get back. And so Otis played his guitar. And whooooeee, there ain’t a song he don’t know. And if he don’t know it, he can pick it up right quick if you hum it to him. He has a gift.”
Gloria stopped and smiled over at Otis, and he smiled back. He looked all lit up from the inside.
“Tell what happened,” Sweetie Pie said. “Tell about that dog.”
“So,” said Gloria. “Franny and me, we started thinking about all these songs we knew from when we was girls. We got Otis to play them and we started singing them, teaching the words to these children.”
“And then somebody sneezed,” Sweetie Pie shouted.
“That’s right,” said Gloria. “Somebody sneezed and it wasn’t none of us. So we looked around, wondering who did, thinking that maybe we got us a burglar in the house. We looked around and we didn’t see nothing, so we started into singing again. And sure enough, there was another big
I shook my head.
“Winn-Dixie!” shouted Sweetie Pie.
“That dog of yours was all hid underneath my bed, squeezed under there like the world was about to end. But he was smiling like a fool every time he heard Otis play the guitar, smiling so hard he sneezed.”
My daddy laughed.
“It is true,” Miss Franny said.
“It’s the truth,” said Stevie.
Dunlap nodded and smiled right at me.
“So,” Gloria Dump said, “Otis played his guitar right to that dog, and a little bit at a time, Winn-Dixie came creeping out from underneath the bed.”
“He was covered in dust,” said Amanda.
“He looked like a ghost,” said Dunlap.
“Yeah,” said Sweetie Pie, “just like a ghost.”
“Mmmmm-hmm,” said Gloria. “Looked just like a ghost. Anyway, the storm stopped after a while. And your dog settled in under my chair. And fell asleep. And that’s where he’s been ever since, just waiting on you to come back and find him.”
“Winn-Dixie,” I said. I hugged him so tight he wheezed. “We were out there whistling and calling for you and you were right here all along. Thank you,” I said to everybody.
“Well,” said Gloria Dump. “We didn’t do nothin’. We just sat here and waited and sang some songs. We all got to be good friends. Now. The punch ain’t nothin’ but water and the egg-salad sandwiches got tore up by the rain. You got to eat them with a spoon if you want egg salad. But we got pickles to eat. And Littmus Lozenges. And we still got a party going on.”
My daddy pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down.
“Otis,” he said, “do you know any hymns?”
“I know some,” said Otis.
“You hum it,” said Miss Franny, nodding her head, “and he can play it.”
So my daddy started humming something and Otis started picking it out on his guitar, and Winn-Dixie wagged his tail and lay back down underneath Gloria’s chair. I looked around the room at all the different faces, and I felt my heart swell up inside me with pure happiness.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” I said.
But they were all singing now and laughing, and Winn-Dixie was snoring, so no one heard me.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Outside, the rain had stopped and the clouds had gone away and the sky was so clear it seemed like I could see every star ever made. I walked all the way to the back of Gloria Dump’s yard. I walked back there and looked at her mistake tree. The bottles were quiet; there wasn’t a breeze, so they were just hanging there. I looked at the tree and then I looked up at the sky.
“Mama,” I said, just like she was standing right beside me, “I know ten things about you, and that’s not enough, that’s not near enough. But Daddy is going to tell me more; I know he will, now that he knows you’re not coming back. He misses you and I miss you, but my heart doesn’t feel empty anymore. It’s full all the way up. I’ll still think about you, I promise. But probably not as much as I did this summer.”
That’s what I said that night underneath Gloria Dump’s mistake tree. And after I was done saying it, I stood just staring up at the sky, looking at the constellations and planets. And then I remembered my own tree, the one Gloria had helped me plant. I hadn’t looked at it for a long time. I went crawling around on my hands and knees, searching for it. And when I found it, I was surprised at how much it had grown. It was still small. It still looked more like a plant than a tree. But the leaves and the branches felt real strong and good and right. And I was down there on my knees when I heard a voice say, “Are you praying?”
I looked up. It was Dunlap.
“No,” I said. “I’m not praying. I’m thinking.”
He crossed his arms and looked down at me. “What about?” he asked.
“All kinds of different things,” I said. “I’m sorry that I called you and Stevie bald-headed babies.”
“That’s all right,” he said. “Gloria told me to come out here and get you.”
“I told you she wasn’t a witch.”
“I know it,” he said. “I knew it all along. I was just teasing you.”
“Oh,” I said. I looked at him close. It was hard to see him good in the dark yard.
“Ain’t you ever gonna stand up?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
And then he surprised me. He did something I never in a million years thought a Dewberry boy would do. He held out his hand to help me up. And I took it. I let him pull me to my feet.
“I’ll race you back to the house,” Dunlap said. And he started to run.
“Okay,” I shouted. “But I’m warning you, I’m fast.”
We ran, and I beat him. I touched the corner of Gloria Dump’s house right before he did.
“You shouldn’t be running around in the dark,” said Amanda. She was standing on the porch, looking at us. “You could trip over something.”
“Aw, Amanda,” said Dunlap, and he shook his head.
“Aw, Amanda,” I said, too. And then I remembered Carson and I felt bad for her. I went up on the porch and took hold of her hand and pulled on her. “Come on,” I said, “let’s go inside.”
“India Opal,” Daddy said when me and Amanda and Dunlap walked in. “Are you here to sing some songs with us?”
“Yes sir,” I said. “Only I don’t know that many songs.”
“We’ll teach you,” he said. He smiled at me real big. It was a good thing to see.
“That’s right,” said Gloria Dump. “We will.” Sweetie Pie was still sitting in her lap, but her eyes were closed.
“Care for a Littmus Lozenge?” Miss Franny asked, passing me the bowl.
“Thank you,” I told her. I took a Littmus Lozenge and unwrapped it and put it in my mouth.
“Do you want a pickle?” Otis asked, holding up his big jar of pickles.
“No, thank you,” I said. “Not right now.”
Winn-Dixie came out from underneath Gloria Dump’s chair. He sat down next to me and leaned into me the
