Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks

Chapter 7 commences with Satchmo Jenkins recalling the time he was bitten in the leg by a neighbor’s rottweiler. The dog took “a chunk out of the back of Satchmo’s leg, left teeth marks that scarred in the shape of a sad face” (119). Satchmo was known to catch whatever ball was thrown his way and “never ever missed” (119). On the day of the biting, Satchmo missed a throw and the football fell “right into Ms. Adams’s yard, where Brutus the Rottweiler lived, chained to a tree” (120). Ms. Adams was “an older lady who sat in the window […] making sure no one stepped foot in her yard” (120). After ensuring that Ms. Adams is not in her customary spot in the window, Satchmo sneaks into her yard to retrieve the ball. He does and holds the ball up as “a sign of victory for Clancy to see” (122). Then, Brutus breaks free from his chain, begins to chase Satchmo, and bites him.

Four years later, Satchmo and his mother move to a new neighborhood for her new job “as an office assistant at a veterinary clinic” (123). After Satchmo’s incident with Brutus, his mother attempts to teach Satchmo how to interact with dogs. Despite her best efforts, Satchmo still fears dogs as “the scars on the back of his leg—the raised dots and dashes like Morse code on his skin—served as a reminder that dogs were dangerous” (123). Satchmo can handle being around small dogs “as long as they were no bigger than a football,” but bigger dogs continue to scare him and “caused his back to tighten” (124). He does not encounter dogs on his walks home from school. This changes when he discovers that a neighbor named “Mr. Jerry had gotten a dog” after his wife’s death and after Satchmo’s mother’s suggested he rescue a dog (124). Satchmo immediately begins devising escape plans for his next walk home.

The next day, after school, Satchmo starts his journey home. He begins to talk himself through the various escape plans he has devised and obsesses over the different ways he can avoid another dog attack like the one four years before. Satchmo considers these escape plans as matters of life or death, or as “the master plan to save his life” (131). Satchmo walks on the other side of the street outside of Mr. Jerry’s house to evade Mr. Jerry’s new dog. Mr. Jerry calls him over to meet his new dog while the dog’s tongue is “slapping the old man’s cheek” (132).