‘Daddy, do you know how you always tell me that we should help those less fortunate than ourselves?’ ‘Hmmm-hmmm,’ he said. He rubbed his nose and looked around at his papers. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I found a Less Fortunate at the grocery store.’ ‘Is that right?’ he said. ‘Yes sir,’ I told him. I stared at the preacher really hard. Sometimes he reminded me of a turtle hiding inside its shell, in there thinking about things and not ever sticking his head out into the world. ‘Daddy, I was wondering. Could this Less Fortunate, could he stay with us for a while?’ Finally the preacher looked up at me. ‘Opal,’ he said, ‘what are you talking about?’ ‘I found a dog,’ I told him. ‘And I want to keep him.’ ‘No dogs,’ the preacher said. ‘We’ve talked about this before. You don’t need a dog.’ ‘I know it.’ I said. ‘I know I don’t need a dog. But this dog needs me. Look,’ I said. I went to the trailer door and I hollered, ‘Winn-Dixie!’ Winn-Dixie’s ears shot up in the air and he grinned and sneezed, and then he came limping up the steps and into the trailer and put his head right in the preacher’s lap, right on top of a pile of papers. The preacher looked at Winn-Dixie. He looked at his ribs and his matted-up fur and the places where he was bald. The preacher’s nose wrinkled up. Like I said, the dog smelled pretty bad.
Do you think this is a good description of the preacher? 82