Colorado Springs, Co.-Residents of Colorado Springs reveal that the most surprising thing about Byron Sully’s army service is that he made it through three notably Civil War-centric visitors without once mentioning that he too had been in the war.
“At first I was so engaged in getting Sully free and keeping him alive that I didn’t have time to think on it,” Sully’s fiance, Dr. Michaela “Mike” Quinn, comments. “Now that we are back home in Colorado and I’ve had some time to think on it, it’s remarkable that this never came up before. Why when Mr. Watkins was here with his photographs and he had so many on display from the Civil War. And then there was Dorothy’s son–he even dined with us and discussed his war experiences. Then of course it came up again when David was here–I was so sure he was lost in the war, but he was in fact lost only in his own lies.”
Colorado Springs residents are divided on Sully’s reticent approach.
“Oh, this doesn’t surprise me one bit,” Loren Bray, Sully’s former father-in-law and proprietor of the mercantile shares. “I always knew from the moment he ran off with my daughter that there was more to him that met the eye and none of it good. Not that serving in the war is bad, mind you, but he lied about this and who knows what else he lied about. Who can say?”
Dorothy Jennings, mother of morphine-addled veteran Tom, takes a softer approach.
“I think I can understand it,” Dorothy says. “For an experience to have changed my Tommy so much, it must have just been awful. I think what surprises me is not that he didn’t want to talk about it, but that he managed to not talk about it. I can’t imagine coming face to face with such a reminder of your own past in the army and not saying anything about it.”
Colorado Springs residents unanimously confirm that Dorothy cannot keep her mouth shut about anything. Barber and Mayor Jake Slicker, meanwhile, insists that his offer to extend a free cut to a veteran applied only to Tom.
“That was just because I was trying to impress Dorothy,” Jake insists. “I am not giving Sully a free haircut, although we all know he could use one.”
At press time, Dr. Mike was realizing that both of her fiances have lied in connection to their pasts in the war and wondered if that said anything about her, but she instead busied herself reading a book chapter to teach herself a complex medical procedure which she looked forward to performing successfully.
