Because of Winn-Dixie

Chapter Twelve

Me and Winn-Dixie got to Gertrude’s Pets so early for my first day of work that the CLOSED sign was still in the window. But when I pushed on the door, it swung open, and so we went on inside. I was about to call out to Otis that we were there, but then I heard music. It was the prettiest music I have ever heard in my life. I looked around to see where it was coming from, and that’s when I noticed that all the animals were out of their cages. There were rabbits and hamsters and gerbils and mice and birds and lizards and snakes, and they were all just sitting there on the floor like they had turned to stone, and Otis was standing in the middle of them. He was playing a guitar and he had on skinny pointy-toed cowboy boots and he was tapping them while he was playing the music. His eyes were closed and he was smiling.

Winn-Dixie got a dreamy kind of look on his face. He smiled really hard at Otis and then he sneezed and then his whiskers went all fuzzy, and then he sighed and kind of dropped to the floor with all the other animals. Just then, Gertrude caught sight of Winn-Dixie. “Dog,” she croaked, and flew over and landed on his head. Otis looked up at me. He stopped playing his guitar and the spell was broken. The rabbits started hopping and the birds started flying and the lizards started leaping and the snakes started slithering and Winn-Dixie started barking and 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.