“But she left me,” I told him.
“She left us,” said the preacher softly. I could see him pulling his old turtle head back into his stupid turtle shell. “She packed her bags and left us, and she didn’t leave one thing behind.”
“Okay,” I said. I got up off the couch. Winn-Dixie hopped off, too. “Thank you for telling me,” I said.
I went right back to my room and wrote down all ten things that the preacher had told me. I wrote them down just the way he said them to me so that I wouldn’t forget them, and then I read them out loud to Winn-Dixie until I had them memorized. I wanted to know those ten things inside and out. That way, if my mama ever came back, I could recognize her, and I would be able to grab her and hold on to her tight and not let her get away from me again.
Winn-Dixie couldn’t stand to be left alone; we found that out real quick. If me and the preacher went off and left him by himself in the trailer, he pulled all the cushions off the couch and all the toilet paper off the roll. So we started tying him up outside with a rope when we left. That didn’t work either. Winn-Dixie howled until Samuel, Mrs. Detweller’s dog, started howling, too. It was exactly the kind of noise that people in an all adult trailer park do not like to hear.
“He just doesn’t want to be left alone,” I told the preacher. “That’s all. Let’s take him with us.” I could understand the way Winn-Dixie felt. Getting left behind probably made his heart feel empty.
After a while, the preacher gave in. And everywhere we went, we took Winn-Dixie. Even to church.
The Open Arms Baptist Church of Naomi isn’t a regular-looking church. The building used to be a Pick-It-Quick store, and when you walk in the front door, the first thing you see is the Pick-It-Quick motto. It’s written on the floor in little tiny red tiles that make great big letters that say “PICK PICK PICK QUICK QUICK QUICK.” The preacher tried painting over those tiles, but the letters won’t stay covered up, and so the preacher has just given up and let them be.
The other thing about the Open Arms that is different from other churches is there aren’t any pews. People bring in their own foldup chairs and lawn chairs, and so sometimes it looks more like the congregation is watching a parade or sitting at a barbecue instead of being at church. It’s kind of a strange church and I thought Winn-Dixie would fit right in.
But the first time we brought Winn-Dixie to the Open Arms, the preacher tied him outside the front door.
“Why did we bring him all the way here just to tie him up?” I asked the preacher.
“Because dogs don’t belong in church, Opal,” the preacher said. “That’s why.”
He tied Winn-Dixie up to a tree and said how there was lots of shade for him and that it ought to work out real good.
Well, it didn’t. The service started and there was some singing and some sharing and some praying, and then the preacher started preaching. And he wasn’t but two or three words into his sermon when there was a terrible howl coming from outside.
The preacher tried to ignore it.
“Today,” he said.
“Aaaaaarrooo,” said Winn-Dixie.
“Please,” said the preacher.
“Arrrroooowwww,” said Winn-Dixie back.
“Friends,” said the preacher.
“Arrruiiiiipppp,” wailed Winn-Dixie.
Everyone turned in their lawn chairs and foldup chairs and looked at one another.
“Opal,” said the preacher.
“Owwwwww,” said Winn-Dixie.
“Yes sir?” I said.
“Go get that dog!” he yelled.
“Yes sir!” I yelled back.
I went outside and untied Winn-Dixie and brought him inside, and he sat down beside me and smiled up at the preacher, and the preacher couldn’t help it; he smiled back. Winn-Dixie had that effect on him.
And so the preacher started in preaching again. Winn-Dixie sat there listening to it, wiggling his ears this way and that, trying to catch all the words. And everything would have been all right, except that a mouse ran across the floor.
The Open Arms had mice. They were there from when it was a Pick-It-Quick and there were lots of good things to eat in the building, and when the Pick-It-Quick became the Open Arms Baptist Church of Naomi, the mice stayed around to eat all the leftover crumbs from the potluck suppers. The preacher kept on saying he was going to have to do something about them, but he never did. Because the truth is, he couldn’t stand the thought of hurting anything, even a mouse.
Well, Winn-Dixie saw that mouse, and he was up and after him. One minute, everything was quiet and serious and the preacher was going on and on and on; and the next minute, Winn-Dixie looked like a furry bullet, shooting across the building, chasing that mouse. He was barking and his feet were skidding all over the polished Pick-It-Quick floor, and people were clapping and hollering and pointing. They really went wild when Winn-Dixie actually caught the mouse.
“I have never in my life seen a dog catch a mouse,” said Mrs. Nordley. She was sitting next to me.
“He’s a special dog,” I told her.
“I imagine so,” she said back.
Winn-Dixie stood up there in front of the whole church, wagging his tail and holding the mouse real careful in his mouth, holding onto him tight but not squishing him.
“I believe that mutt has got some retriever in him,” said somebody behind me. “That’s a hunting dog.”
Winn-Dixie took the mouse over to the preacher and dropped it at his feet. And when the mouse tried to get away, Winn-Dixie put his paw right on the mouse’s tail. Then he smiled up at the preacher. He showed him all his teeth. The preacher looked down at the mouse. He looked at Winn-Dixie. He looked at me. He rubbed his nose. It got real quiet in the Pick-It-Quick.
“Let us pray,” the preacher finally said, “for this mouse.”
And everybody started laughing and clapping. The preacher picked up the mouse by the tail and walked and threw it out the front door of the Pick-It-Quick, and everybody applauded again.
Then he came back and we all prayed together. I prayed for my mama. I told God how much she would have enjoyed hearing the story of Winn-Dixie catching that mouse. It would have made her laugh. I asked God if maybe I could be the one to tell her that story someday.
And then I talked to God about how I was lonely in Naomi because I didn’t know that many kids, only the ones from church. And there weren’t that many kids at the Open Arms, just Dunlap and Stevie Dewberry, two brothers who weren’t twins but looked like they were. And Amanda Wilkinson, whose face was always pinched up like she was smelling something real bad; and Sweetie Pie Thomas, who was only five years old and still mostly a baby. And none of them wanted to be my friend anyway because they probably thought I’d tell on them to the preacher for every little thing they did wrong; and then they would get in trouble with God and their parents. So I told God that I was lonely, even having Winn-Dixie.
And finally, I prayed for the mouse, like the preacher suggested. I prayed that he didn’t get hurt when he went flying out the door of the Open Arms Baptist Church of Naomi. I prayed that he landed on a nice soft patch of grass.
I spent a lot of time that summer at the Herman W. Block Memorial Library. The Herman W. Block Memorial Library sounds like it would be a big fancy place, but it’s not. It’s just a little old house full of books, and Miss Franny Block is in charge of them all. She is a very small, very old woman with short gray hair, and she was the first friend I made in Naomi.
It all started with Winn-Dixie not liking it when I went into the library, because he couldn’t go inside, too. But I showed him how he could stand up on his hind legs and look in the window and see me in there, selecting my books; and he was okay, as long as he could see me. But the thing was, the first time Miss Franny Block saw Winn-Dixie standing up on his hind legs like that, looking in the window, she didn’t think he was a dog. She thought he was a bear.
This is what happened: I was picking out my books and kind of humm
ing to myself, and all of a sudden, there was this loud and scary scream. I went running up to the front of the library, and there was Miss Franny Block, sitting on the floor behind her desk.
“Miss Franny?” I said. “Are you all right?”
“A bear,” she said.
“A bear?” I asked.
“He has come back,” she said.
“He has?” I asked. “Where is he?”
“Out there,” she said and raised a finger and pointed at Winn-Dixie standing up on his hind legs, looking in the window for me.
“Miss Franny Block,” I said, “that’s not a bear. That’s a dog. That’s my dog. Winn-Dixie.”
“Are you positive?” she asked.
“Yes ma’am,” I told her. “I’m positive. He’s my dog. I would know him anywhere.”
Miss Franny sat there trembling and shaking.
“Come on,” I said. “Let me help you up. It’s okay.” I stuck out my hand and Miss Franny took hold of it, and I pulled her up off the floor. She didn’t weigh hardly anything at all. Once she was standing on her feet, she started acting all embarrassed, saying how I must think she was a silly old lady, mistaking a dog for a bear, but that she had a bad experience with a bear coming into the Herman W. Block Memorial Library a long time ago and she never had quite gotten over it.
“When did that happen?” I asked her.
“Well,” said Miss Franny, “it is a very long story.”
“That’s okay,” I told her. “I am like my mama in that I like to be told stories. But before you start telling it, can Winn-Dixie come in and listen, too? He gets lonely without me.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Miss Franny. “Dogs are not allowed in the Herman W. Block Memorial Library.”
“He’ll be good,” I told her. “He’s a dog who goes to church.” And before she could say yes or no, I went outside and got Winn-Dixie, and he came in and lay down with a “huummmppff” and a sigh, right at Miss Franny’s feet.
She looked down at him and said, “He most certainly is a large dog.”
“Yes ma’am,” I told her. “He has a large heart, too.”
“Well,” Miss Franny said. She bent over and gave Winn-Dixie a pat on the head, and Winn-Dixie wagged his tail back and forth and snuffled his nose on her little old-lady feet. “Let me get a chair and sit down so I can tell this story properly.”
Back when Florida was wild, when it consisted of nothing but palmetto trees and mosquitoes so big they could fly away with you,” Miss Franny Block started in, “and I was just a little girl no bigger than you, my father, Herman W. Block, told me that I could have anything I wanted for my birthday. Anything at all.”
Miss Franny looked around the library. She leaned in close to me. “I don’t want to appear prideful,” she said, “but my daddy was a very rich man. A very rich man.” She nodded and then leaned back and said, “And I was a little girl who loved to read. So I told him, I said, ‘Daddy, I would most certainly love to have a library for my birthday, a small little library would be wonderful.’”
“You asked for a whole library?”
“A small one,” Miss Franny nodded. “I wanted a little house full of nothing but books and I wanted to share them, too. And I got my wish. My father built me this house, the very one we are sitting in now. And at a very young age, I became a librarian. Yes ma’am.”
“What about the bear?” I said.
“Did I mention that Florida was wild in those days?” Miss Franny Block said.
“Uh-huh, you did.”
“It was wild. There were wild men and wild women and wild animals.”
“Like bears!”
“Yes ma’am. That’s right. Now, I have to tell you, I was a little-miss-know-it-all. I was a miss-smarty-pants with my library full of books. Oh, yes ma’am, I thought I knew the answers to everything. Well, one hot Thursday, I was sitting in my library with all the doors and windows open and my nose stuck in a book, when a shadow crossed the desk. And without looking up, yes ma’am, without even looking up, I said, ‘Is there a book I can help you find?’
“Well, there was no answer. And I thought it might have been a wild man or a wild woman, scared of all these books and afraid to speak up. But then I became aware of a very peculiar smell, a very strong smell. I raised my eyes slowly. And standing right in front of me was a bear. Yes ma’am. A very large bear.”
“How big?” I asked.
“Oh, well,” said Miss Franny, “perhaps three times the size of your dog.”
“Then what happened?” I asked her.
“Well,” said Miss Franny, “I looked at him and he looked at me. He put his big nose up in the air and sniffed and sniffed as if he was trying to decide if a little-miss-know-it-all librarian was what he was in the mood to eat. And I sat there. And then I thought, ‘Well, if this bear intends to eat me, I am not going to let it happen without a fight. No ma’am.’ So very slowly and very carefully, I raised up the book I was reading.”
“What book was that?” I asked.
“Why, it was War and Peace, a very large book. I raised it up slowly and then I aimed it carefully and I threw it right at that bear and screamed, ‘Be gone!’ And do you know what?”
“No ma’am,” I said.
“He went. But this is what I will never forget. He took the book with him.”
“Nuh-uh,” I said.
“Yes ma’am,” said Miss Franny. “He snatched it up and ran.”
“Did he come back?” I asked.
“No, I never saw him again. Well, the men in town used to tease me about it. They used to say, ‘Miss Franny, we saw that bear of yours out in the woods today. He was reading that book and he said it sure was good and would it be all right if he kept it for just another week.’ Yes ma’am. They did tease me about it.” She sighed. “I imagine I’m the only one left from those days. I imagine I’m the only one that even recalls that bear. All my friends, everyone I knew when I was young, they are all dead and gone.”
She sighed again. She looked sad and old and wrinkled. It was the same way I felt sometimes, being friendless in a new town and not having a mama to comfort me. I sighed, too.
Winn-Dixie raised his head off his paws and looked back and forth between me and Miss Franny. He sat up then and showed Miss Franny his teeth.
“Well now, look at that,” she said. “That dog is smiling at me.”
“It’s a talent of his,” I told her.
“It is a fine talent,” Miss Franny said. “A very fine talent.” And she smiled back at Winn-Dixie.
“We could be friends,” I said to Miss Franny. “I mean you and me and Winn-Dixie, we could all be friends.”
Miss Franny smiled even bigger. “Why, that would be grand,” she said, “just grand.”
And right at that minute, right when the three of us had decided to be friends, who should come marching into the Herman W. Block Memorial Library but old pinch-faced Amanda Wilkinson. She walked right up to Miss Franny’s desk and said, “I finished Johnny Tremain and I enjoyed it very much. I would like something even more difficult to read now, because I am an advanced reader.”
“Yes dear, I know,” said Miss Franny. She got up out of her chair.
Amanda pretended like I wasn’t there. She stared right past me. “Are dogs allowed in the library?” she asked Miss Franny as they walked away.
“Certain ones,” said Miss Franny, “a select few.” And then she turned around and winked at me. I smiled back. I had just made my first friend in Naomi, and nobody was going to mess that up for me, not even old pinch-faced Amanda Wilkinson.
Winn-Dixie’s bald spots started growing fur, and the fur that he had to begin with started looking shiny and healthy; and he didn’t limp anymore. And you could tell that he was proud of looking so good, proud of not looking like a stray. I thought what he needed most was a collar and a leash, so I went into Gertrude’s Pets, where there were fish and snakes and mice and lizards and gerbils and pet supplies, and I fo
und a real handsome red leather collar with a matching leash.
Winn-Dixie was not allowed to come inside the store (there was a big sign on the door that said NO DOGS ALLOWED), so I held the collar and the leash up to the window. And Winn-Dixie, who was standing on the other side of the window, pulled up his lip and showed me his teeth and sneezed and wagged his tail something furious; so I knew he absolutely loved that leash and collar combination. But it was very expensive.
I decided to explain my situation to the man behind the counter. I said, “I don’t get a big enough allowance to afford something this fancy. But I love this collar and leash, and so does my dog, and I was thinking that maybe you could set me up on an installment plan.”
“Installment plan?” said the man.
“Gertrude!” somebody screamed in a real irritating voice.
I looked around. It was a parrot. She was sitting on top of one of the fish tanks, looking right at me.
“An installment plan,” I said, ignoring the parrot, “you know, where I promise to give you my allowance every week and you give me the leash and the collar now.”
“I don’t think I can do that,” said the man. He shook his head. “No, the owner, she wouldn’t like that.” He looked down at the counter. He wouldn’t look at me. He had thick black hair, and it was slicked back like Elvis Presley’s. He had on a name tag that said OTIS.
“Or I could work for you,” I said. “I could come in and sweep the floors and dust the shelves and take out the trash. I could do that.”
I looked around Gertrude’s Pets. There was sand and sunflower-seed shells and big dust bunnies all over the floor. I could tell that it needed to be swept.
“Uh,” said Otis. He looked down at the counter some more.
“Gertrude!” the parrot screamed again.
“I’m real trustworthy,” I said. “I’m new in town, but my daddy is a preacher. He’s the preacher at the Open Arms Baptist Church of Naomi, so I’m real honest. But the only thing is, Winn-Dixie, my dog, he would have to come inside with me; because if we get separated for too long, he starts to howl something terrible.”