chasing everything that was moving, and Otis shouted, “Help me!”
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.
Chapter Thirteen
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
