FREDRIC BROWN
LITTLE APPLE HARD TO PEEL
The Appel family moved to our part of the county when John Appel was ten or eleven years old. He was the only kid.
New kids didn’t move in very often and, naturally, some of us took considerable interest in finding out whether we could lick him. He liked to fight, we found, and he was good at it.
His name being John Appel, Jonathan Apple was the nickname we picked at first. For some reason, it made him mad, and there wasn’t any trouble getting him to fight. He fought with a cold calmness that was unusual for a boy. He never seemed to see red, like the rest of us.
He was small for his age, but tough and muscular. He could lick, we soon learned, any kid his own size. And he could lick most kids who were bigger. He licked me twice, and Les Willis three or four times.
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