Because of Winn-Dixie - Kate DiCamillo [13]
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.
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