We’ve never spoken before, but you know me.
You know William Tell, the Swiss archer,
who shot an apple off his son’s head.
Well I’m the son, Walter. And I held still—
you know that too—but there’s more to it.
I held still out of anger, not fear.
My father and I had gone to see my granddad
in Altdorf, the capital of our canton, Uri.
My mother had told my father not to go.
She said the puppet-governor is visiting there,
and, Tell, you know he bears you ill will.
No matter, my father said, I’ll go.
He wondered how the tyrant could find fault
with a man who always tried to do what’s right.
She said that’s what he finds fault with.
He despises men who do what’s right.
Still, I have to check on your aging dad,
he said, shouldering his crossbow and striding from sight.
The puppet-governor was a regent of the throne,
court of the House of Habsburg, a rising empire
that reached beyond the forest cantons for power.
The empire claimed the beasts and birds and fish
and crops from the plains and waters below the Alps,
a green and gentle land, my father said.
Why don’t people unite to take what’s theirs?
I asked. He said because the Habsburgs draw
away their trust and divide man from man
by spreading fear and promising bread and protection.
The lies haven’t taken hold here,
though the puppet stretches the empire’s reach to the mountains.
That’s why we took the night oath.
You’ve heard me talk about that, he said,
the high meadow before dawn and men gathered,
hidden by the night, the forest and rock walls,
in view of the winding lake and moon’s rainbow,
a portent of freedom, standing together against tyrants.
He kept quiet on the details. The league vowed
to storm the oppressors’ castles to crush their bases
in our lands and force them away, stop them from lording
over our every turn. His passion was clear
in what he didn’t say. He was devoted
to all the people of the cantons and the fight for freedom.
He took the oath to heart. Funny thing,
he never made it to that secret rendezvous.
Where was he when the oath was made?
I don’t know—rescuing a lost lamb?
hunting a chamois in the cliffs? snoozing at home?
I never knew. Any of these were possible.
He was bone tired. He’d saved a man
chased by troops of another puppet-tyrant,
of Unterwalden, a neighboring forest canton.
The coxcomb had pushed into the man’s house
when he was out in the forest cutting timber
and barred the door, cornering the man’s wife.
He told the woman to draw him a bath
and unwrapped his cloak, laying it on a bench.
To her, it was clear where this was going,
and the fool thought she’d let him do it.
No, she wouldn’t. She kicked the brute aside
and ran to the trees and sound of her husband’s ax.
When the man got to his house, enraged,
the royal puppet was still dallying there,
and the woodman split his skull with a single blow,
drawing the beast a bath of his own blood.
Then the man ran for the lake to escape
but found the water churning and boats ashore.
The single boatman there, battening his craft,
refused to take the fugitive across, thinking
the gamble would trade two lives for one.
My father, who had happened by, declared
I’ll take the fellow and leave the rest to God.
He did, steering the boat through the maw of the storm.
My mother wasn’t happy about that.
When she learned my father had risked his life
to save a stranger, she cried, Think about me!
You weren’t trusting God but tempting God.
Think about your family! What about us?
My father said he had done it for her.
But she wasn’t buying—done it for me?
What about the oath of the night meadow?
she asked—he had told her about that.
He said again he wasn’t even there.
No, you didn’t have to be, she said.
You’ll be truer to those words than anyone.
Heddie, he called her, Heddie, he said,
the stranger’s grievance and others forced the oath.
We have to defend our families. Unity is our strength.
Well, don’t forget your own family, she said.
I couldn’t, he said, you’re why I do what I do.
The empire’s puppets have twisted against us all.
The puppet-tyrants were at the fringes of power,
covetous, driven to display what they lacked,
chaos agents too weak for order.
Devoted to outrage, absurdity, malice, lies,
they strutted whatever trappings of power they had.
Such was the puppet-governor of Uri and Schwyz.
He was our very own puppet-tyrant,
now in Altdorf, where I went with my father.
We had to check on Granddad, an elder of the region.
Nearing his house, in town, we passed a pole
stuck in the ground with a hat wobbling on top.
We took no special notice crossing the common.
Why would we, an empty hat in the air
dwarfed by a stately linden, a landmark to all?
Soldiers grabbed my father and demanded why
he hadn’t shown respect to the empty hat.
Bend the knee or break the law, they said,
a new law the governor had recently made.
It was a test of obedience and father had failed,
by accident, of course, which didn’t matter to the goons.
He hadn’t lowered himself in front of the hat.
So they called the governor’s entourage,
and the puppet appeared, recognizing my father,
a man too brazenly free for comfort.
I remember the puppet-tyrant’s face,
frightful to look at, tarnished by the venom
in his heart, crowned by a spidery web of hair.
Strange and inhuman, he looked like a rotting melon.
Our puppet-gov was empty as an orange rind.
The perversity made my anger flash like a pike.
That was the start of the story you know.
The governor plucked an apple from a tree,
backed me to the linden and put the fruit on my head.
He ordered my father to take 80 paces
and sneered: to avoid death for you and your son,
shoot the apple from his head…one try.
It was an unnatural order. My father said so,
crumpling to the ground. I’d never seen him that way.
The governor was amused. It was such fun
to watch a man grovel for his son’s life.
You can’t make me do that, my father pleaded.
I can, William Tell, it’s your trial.
The puppet was in his glory. He continued:
What’s the problem? You’re a good shot,
right? He smirked, It’s a big apple.
Others were gathering now, seeing the cruelty
and joining my father in begging the tyrant to stop.
Was an empty hat worth more than a life?
Apparently. Like the devil, the puppet-governor
was a close observer of human bonds
and of love, that curious thing, so useful.
It could unmake a man, break him down
to a timid creature that folds its wings
to protect the hole it’s run to. Pathetic.
For a moment, my father looked pathetic.
He couldn’t act. He couldn’t see straight.
But he loaded an arrow onto his bow
and secretly slipped another beneath his vest.
While Granddad and others clamored against the tyrant,
my father raised his weapon and caught my eye.
He held firm for a moment amid the noise.
And while the puppet had seen the inundating
tide of love in my father, I saw a vessel
rising as high as the tide would take it.
My father didn’t waver. He held and squeezed
the bow, and the arrow blew through the apple to the tree.
The broken apple fell into my hands,
like a gift offered, an open book.
I could see the man my father was
and the tyrant, less a man than a coil of resentments.
My father had triumphed. He had won the trial,
but the puppet had one more question.
What’s under your vest, William Tell?
The governor promised my father would still be spared
if he told the truth, but I didn’t trust him.
My father should have kept his mouth shut.
He spoke up with face-saving pride:
If I missed, the second arrow was for you.
I could almost hear my mother shouting,
Rein it in! But Father had said his piece.
The tyrant seized him for rebellious intent
and warned his fellows to be silent and obey.
It was a lesson to me: do neither!
The troops chained my father and led him away.
More drama would come. The puppet-gov
embarked on a vessel with my father, crossing the lake
to throw him down a dungeon and waste his life.
But another storm blasted the water
and my father found a way to leap ashore
when the boat collided with a rocky reef.
Wending home, my father was told the puppet
had also escaped the storm and was riding to the castle
where he’d planned to lock up my father for good.
That changed my father’s course. He hurried
along a shortcut to where the puppet would pass,
and his second arrow struck the tyrant’s heart.
He was acting on a vow of revenge he’d made
in the dirt at Altdorf when the puppet was flaunting
his dominion over everything my father was,
rubbing his face in powerlessness with a twinkle of delight.
He was daring my father to be a man.
The killing strike was my father’s response.
He would rethink it later. And my mother
had already hit the roof at my father for shooting
the apple off my head, crying that he should
have willingly gone to his death before this act
of pride had risked my life. She didn’t know
his shot was the only way to save us both.
He’d acted only to save me, his son.
But my mother had a point. Pride
was bound in my father’s bow like the sinew itself,
though less in piercing the apple than the miscreant puppet.
Splitting the apple was an act of courage,
shooting the puppet-gov, courage gone dark.
Despite his rationalizations, my father knew this,
and the awareness haunted him. It was his demon.
He came to grips with it when a bitter duke
who’d just murdered the Habsburg emperor, his kinsman,
sought help from my father in escaping capture,
thinking the two killings were basically the same.
My father, who’d just come home from ambushing the puppet,
ripped into the man, at first, about the difference
between murdering for ambition’s sake and defending one’s family.
It didn’t ring true. His act was outside the oath,
and, besides, the oppressors’ castles were soon destroyed.
My father’s act of murder was marginal at best.
My father, Tell, was a man of many shades.
His courage and prowess were celebrated over all
though he was a wanderer, dreamer, headstrong eccentric.
The puppet-gov was the hand of tyranny on us,
tied to a long string from the House of Habsburg.
My father was still the stronger hand of freedom.
The broken apple told a story of good,
the ambush, no. My father changed course.
When he came home, he had no weapon.
He’d hidden it and chosen a path as narrow
as a penitent’s, his haircloth helping the murderer escape
and wanting a better hold on that second arrow.
He’d turned the page to a finer path of resistance
against lords of the earth, their greed and glory,
looking past their sticks and empty hats
to bonds of family, things without strings.
This is what my father gave to me,
Walter Tell, and the rest of the story is mine.
Copyright © 2025 by Sam S. Dodd