In the morning, me and Winn-Dixie went down to sweep the pet store, and I took a Littmus Lozenge for Otis.

“Is it Halloween?” Otis asked when I handed him the candy.

“No,” I said. “Why?”

“Well, you’re giving me candy.”

“It’s just a gift,” I told him. “For today.”

“Oh,” said Otis. He unwrapped the Littmus Lozenge and put it in his mouth. And after a minute, tears started rolling down his face.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Do you like it?” I asked him.

He nodded his head. “It tastes good, but it also tastes a little bit like being in jail.”

“Gertrude,” Gertrude squawked. She picked up the Littmus Lozenge wrapper in her beak and then dropped it and looked around. “Gertrude!” she screamed again.

“You can’t have any,” I told her. “It’s not for birds.” Then, real quick, before I lost my nerve, I said, “Otis, what were you in jail for? Are you a murderer?”

“No ma’am,” he said.

“Are you a burglar?”

“No ma’am,” Otis said again. He sucked on his candy and stared down at his pointy-toed boots.

“You don’t have to tell me,” I said. “I was just wondering.”

“I ain’t a dangerous man,” Otis said, “if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m lonely. But I ain’t dangerous.”

“Okay,” I said. And I went into the back room to get my broom. When I came back out, Otis was standing where I left him, still staring down at his feet.

“It was on account of the music,” he said.

“What was?” I asked.

“Why I went to jail. It was on account of the music.”

“What happened?”

“I wouldn’t stop playing my guitar. Used to be I played it on the street and sometimes people would give me money. I didn’t do it for the money. I did it because the music is better if someone is listening to it. Anyway, the police came. And they told me to stop it. They said how I was breaking the law, and the whole time they were talking to me, I went right on playing my music. And that made them mad. They tried to put handcuffs on me.” He sighed. “I didn’t like that. I wouldn’t have been able to play my guitar with them things on.”

“And then what happened?” I asked him.

“I hit them,” he whispered.

“You hit the police?”

“Uh-huh. One of them. I knocked him out. Then I went to jail. And they locked me up and wouldn’t let me have my guitar. And when they finally let me out, they made me promise I wouldn’t never play my guitar on the street again.” He looked up at me real quick and then back down at his boots. “And I don’t. I only play it in here. For the animals. Gertrude, the human Gertrude, she owns this shop, and she gave me this job when she read about me in the paper and she said it’s all right for me to play music for the animals.”

“You play your music for me and Winn-Dixie and Sweetie Pie,” I said.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “But you ain’t on the street.”

“Thank you for telling me about it, Otis,” I said.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I don’t mind.”

Sweetie Pie came in and I gave her a Littmus Lozenge, and she spit it right out; she said that it tasted bad. She said that it tasted like not having a dog.

I swept the floor real slow that day. I wanted to keep Otis company. I didn’t want him to be lonely. Sometimes, it seemed like everybody in the world was lonely. I thought about my mama. Thinking about her was the same as the hole you keep on feeling with your tongue after you lose a tooth. Time after time, my mind kept going to that empty spot, the spot where I felt like she should be.