Chapter Nine
Just about everything that happened to me that summer happened because of Winn-Dixie. For instance, without him, I would never have met Gloria Dump. He was the one who introduced us.
What happened was this: I was riding my bike home from Gertrude’s Pets and Winn-Dixie was running along beside me. We went past Dunlap and Stevie Dewberry’s house, and when Dunlap and Stevie saw me, they got on their bikes and started following me. They wouldn’t ride with me; they just rode behind me and whispered things that I couldn’t hear. Neither one of them had any hair on his head, because their mama shaved their heads every week during the summer because of the one time Dunlap got fleas in his hair from their cat, Sadie. And now they looked like two identical bald-headed babies, even though they weren’t twins. Dunlap was ten years old, like me, and Stevie was nine and tall for his age.
“I can hear you,” I hollered back at them. “I can hear what you’re saying.” But I couldn’t.
Winn-Dixie started to race way ahead of me.
“You better watch out,” Dunlap hollered. “That dog is headed right for the witch’s house.”
“Winn-Dixie,” I called. But he kept on going faster and hopped a gate and went into the most overgrown jungle of a yard that I had ever seen.
“You better go get your dog out of there,” Dunlap said.
“The witch will eat that dog,” Stevie said.
“Shut up,” I told them.
I got off my bike and went up to the gate and hollered, “Winn-Dixie, you better come on out of there.”
But he didn’t.
“She’s probably eating him right now,” Stevie said. He and Dunlap were standing behind me. “She eats dogs all the time.”
“Get lost, you bald-headed babies,” I said.
“Hey,” said Dunlap, “that ain’t a very nice way for a preacher’s daughter to talk.” He and Stevie backed up a little.
I stood there and thought for a minute. I finally decided that I was more afraid of losing Winn-Dixie than I was of having to deal with a dog-eating witch, so I went through the gate and into the yard.
“That witch is going to eat the dog for dinner and you for dessert,” Stevie said.
“We’ll tell the preacher what happened to you,” Dunlap shouted after me.
By then, I was deep in the jungle. There was every kind of thing growing everywhere. There were flowers and vegetables and trees and vines.
“Winn-Dixie?” I said.
“Heh-heh-heh.” I heard: “This dog sure likes to eat.”
I went around a really big tree all covered in moss, and there was Winn-Dixie. He was eating something right out of the witch’s hand. She looked up at me. “This dog sure likes peanut butter,” she said. “You can always trust a dog that likes peanut butter.”
She was old with crinkly brown skin. She had on a big floppy hat with flowers all over it, and she didn’t have any teeth, but she didn’t look like a witch. She looked nice. And Winn-Dixie liked her, I could tell.
“I’m sorry he got in your garden,” I said.
“You ain’t got to be sorry,” she said. “I enjoy a little company.”
“My name’s Opal,” I told her.
“My name’s Gloria Dump,” she said. “Ain’t that a terrible last name? Dump?”
“My last name is Buloni,” I said. “Sometimes the kids at school back home in Watley called me ‘Lunch Meat.’”
“Hah!” Gloria Dump laughed. “What about this dog? What you call him?”
“Winn-Dixie,” I said.
Winn-Dixie thumped his tail on the ground. He tried smiling, but it was hard with his mouth all full of peanut butter.
“Winn-Dixie?” Gloria Dump said. “You mean like the grocery store?”
“Yes ma’am,” I said.
“Whooooeee,” she said. “That takes the strange-name prize, don’t it?”
“Yes ma’am,” I said.
“I was just fixing to make myself a peanut-butter sandwich,” she said. “You want one, too?”
“All right,” I said. “Yes, please.”
“Go on and sit down,” she said, pointing at a lawn chair with the back all busted out of it. “But sit down careful.”
I sat down careful and Gloria Dump made me a peanut butter sandwich on white bread.
Then she made one for herself and put her false teeth in, to eat it; when she was done, she said to me, “You know, my eyes ain’t too good at all. I can’t see nothing but the general shape of things, so I got to rely on my heart. Why don’t you go on and tell me everything about yourself, so as I can see you with my heart.”
And because Winn-Dixie was looking up at her like she was the best thing he had ever seen, and because the peanut-butter sandwich had been so good, and because I had been waiting for a long time to tell some person everything about me, I did.
Chapter Ten
I told Gloria Dump everything. I told her how me and the preacher had just moved to Naomi and how I had to leave all my friends behind. I told her about my mama leaving, and I listed out the ten things that I knew about her; and I explained that here, in Naomi, I missed Mama more than I ever had in Watley. I told her about the preacher being like a turtle, hiding all the time inside his shell. I told her about finding Winn-Dixie in the produce department and how, because of him, I became friends with Miss Franny Block and got a job working for a man named Otis at Gertrude’s Pets and got invited to Sweetie Pie Thomas’s birthday party. I even told Gloria Dump how Dunlap and Stevie Dewberry called her a witch. But I told her they were stupid, mean, bald-headed boys and I didn’t believe them, not for long anyhow.
And the whole time I was talking, Gloria Dump was listening. She was nodding her head and smiling and frowning and saying, “Hmmm,” and “Is that right?”
I could feel her listening with all her heart, and it felt good.
“You know what?” she said when I was all done.
“What?”
“Could be that you got more of your mama in you than just red hair and freckles and running fast.”
“Really?” I said. “Like what?”
“Like maybe you got her green thumb. The two of us could plant something and see how it grows; test your thumb out.”
“Okay,” I said.
What Gloria Dump picked for me to grow was a tree. Or she said it was a tree. To me, it looked more like a plant. She had me dig a hole for it and put it in the ground and pat the dirt around it tight, like it was a baby and I was tucking it into bed.
“What kind of tree is it?” I asked Gloria Dump.
“It’s a wait-and-see tree,” she said.
“What’s that mean?”
“It means you got to wait for it to grow up before you know what it is.”
“Can I come back and see it tomorrow?” I asked.
“Child,” she said, “as long as this is my garden, you’re welcome in it. But that tree ain’t going to have changed much by tomorrow.”
