have any stories to tell her. And I always did.
Chapter Fourteen
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.
“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.
Chapter Fifteen
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
“What’s that about?” I asked her.
