The Tail of the "R"

At first it had seemed like an insignificant graphic anomaly, and Roxie Plakias dismissed the glitch in Edward Rutledge’s signature as nervousness. After all, it was the Declaration of Independence, and the wording of it had been disputed and modified and finally presented for signing to an exhausted and worried Congress. The story went that Braxton, Morris, Reed, and Rutledge opposed it still. Yet there their signatures sat.

Roxie was fortunate to have had visual access to the original document last semester at the National Archives as part of her Ph.D. research. Her stay in Washington D.C. had been made delightful by the company of a certain Jodie Wooster at the Archives, who flirted with her, allowed her to take low-light exposures of all the signatures (still under glass, but close up and personal), and kept her company that evening and the following night. The research jaunt had been paid for by Temple University; most of Roxie's expenses were paid, as long as she fulfilled her graduate assistant tasks. Teaching Early American History 201 was part of that.

Over the current semester she had become fond of a student in that class, Clarence Deale. He was a would-be tireless young researcher without the access and free time that Roxie had. Roxie privately showed him the close-up photos of the signatures on the Declaration. It was Clarence who suggested handwriting analysis. Roxie had been thinking about that already, and agreed wholeheartedly.

What if most of the signers, particularly the instigators, were so invested in unanimous approval that they’d forged the signatures of those wavering individuals whose objections had been duly recorded, but who seemingly signed anyway? Roxie had obtained photographs of two other documents signed by Rutledge, and there was indeed something different about the tail of the capital R of his last name as it appeared on the Declaration. He’d been 26 at the time; it was possible his signature was still in flux. It was also possible that someone else had signed for him.

Roxie would need to find a respected handwriting expert, one who would not charge too much, which meant going local. She called some random Philadelphia law firms looking for recommendations, but was told she’d be billed for two hours’ work if a word was said about the topic, and Roxie had hung up immediately. But somehow, a Ms. Beatrice Rankin heard of Roxie’s brief phone calls and offered to take a look at the three images of Edward Rutledge’s signature.

This was her team: herself, young Clarence, Ms. Rankin (who had turned out to be elderly), and — long-distance — Jodie, the potential girlfriend who’d allowed her to photograph the original signatures in D.C. “We’re gonna blow this thing wide OPEN,” Clarence was heard to say at the first meeting. Ms. Rankin squinted in manic delight; her experience was with forged checks. This meeting was a validation she’d only dreamed of. Jodie, appearing on laptop via Skype, said, “I really should not have allowed those pictures, Roxie. I don’t want to get in trouble.”

Roxie began to think it was all a big mistake, but it was too late to stop. She had fleeting fantasies of hopping a freight to parts west and dropping the forbidden photographs into some convenient river. But her fear of offending prevailed. "Don't worry, Jodie," Roxie said blithely. "And Clarence, we want to pry it open a bit more delicately,” she added, by way of compromise.

— Macoff