David Sedaris - Happy-Go-Lucky

Copyright 2022 by David Sedaris
Cover design by Jamie Keenan
Cover art from the Steinmetz collection / Florida Memory
Cover copyright 2022 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the authors intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the authors rights.

Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104
littlebrown.com
twitter.com/LittleBrown
facebook.com/LittleBrownandCompany

First ebook edition: May 2022

Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

Acknowledgment is made to the following, in which the stories in this collection first appeared, some differently titled or in slightly different form: The New Yorker: Active Shooter, Father Time, Hurricane Season, Unbuttoned, The Vacuum, Pearls, Happy-Go-Lucky, A Better Place, Lucky-Go-Happy; The Paris Review: A Speech to the Graduates; Elle: Highfalutin; Amazon Original Stories: Themes and Variations; Vogue UK: Smile, Beautiful.

ISBN 9780316392440

E3-20220303-NF-DA-ORI

For Ted Woestendiek

Ban everything. Purify everything. Moral cleanse everything. Anything that was bad or is bad, destroy it. Especially in the forest, where you live your life as a tree, wielding an axe.

Sigmond C. Monster

Explore book giveaways, sneak peeks, deals, and more.

Tap here to learn more.

It was spring, and my sister Lisa and I were in her toy-sized car, riding from the airport in Greensboro, North Carolina, to her house in Winston-Salem. Id gotten up early to catch my flight from Raleigh, but still she had me beat by an hour. I like to be at Starbucks right when they open, at five a.m., she said. Speaking of which, I was there a few months ago and saw a lady with a monkey. I dont know what kind, but it was smallnot much bigger than a dolland was in a pink frilly dress. And it was just soupsetting to me. I wanted to go up to this woman and ask, What do you plan on doing with that thing once you lose interest in it?

Like a lot of pet owners I know, Lisa is certain that no one can take care of an animal as well as she can. Look at how that guy is dragging his Irish setter on that leash! shell say, pointing at what to me just looks like a man walking his dog. Or, if the dog is not on a leash: That beagles about to be hit by a car, and his owners not doing a thing about it. No ones spaniel has the shots it needs. Nobodys bird is eating correctly or getting its toenails trimmed to the proper length.

What made you so sure this woman was going to lose interest in her monkey?

Lisa gave me the look that said, A monkeyof course shes going to lose interest in it, and said, A monkeyof course shes going to lose interest in it.

It was right around there that we came upon a billboard for a firing range called ProShots.

I think we should go to that place and shoot guns, Lisa said.

And so it was that on the following afternoon we arrived for our three oclock appointment. I had assumed for some reason that a firing range would be outdoors, but instead it was situated in a strip mall, next to a tractor-supply store. Inside were glass display cases filled with weapons and a wall of purses a woman could hide a dainty pistol in. This was a niche market I knew nothing about until I returned to Lisas house later that day and went online. There I found websites selling gun-concealing vests, T-shirts, jacketsyou name it. One company makes boxer briefs with a holster in the back, which they call Compression Concealment Shorts but which I would call gunderpants.

Lisa and I quite enjoyed wandering around the store. ROSSI R 352$349.77 , read a tag beside one of the pistols. Were I in, say, an office-supply shop, I could have made a judgment concerning the cost, but I have no idea how much a gun goes for. It was like pricing penguins or milking equipment. My shooting experience was limited to air rifles. Lisa had no experience whatsoever, so before stepping onto the firing range we sat for a forty-minute gun-safety class taught by a retired Winston-Salem police officer named Lonnie, who co-owned the business and was dressed in one of its T-shirts. The man was perhaps in his early fifties, his pale eyebrows and wire-rimmed, almost invisible glasses shaded by a baseball cap with the Blackwater logo on it. He might not be someone youd choose as a friend, but you wouldnt mind him as a neighbor. I shoveled your drive while you were asleep, you could imagine him saying. I hope you dont mind. I just wanted the exercise.

There was a classroom at the back of the store, and, after seating us side by side at one of the desks, Lonnie took the chair across from us. The first thing you need to know about firearm safety is that most people are stupid. I dont mean you folks personally, but people in general. So I have a few rules. Number one: Always assume that every weapon is loaded.

Lisa and I leaned back, wincing, as he laid two guns in front of us. One was a Glock something, and the otherthe nicer-looking onewas a snub-nosed .38 Special.

Now, are these loaded? he asked.

I am going to assume that they are, Lisa answered.

Lonnie said, Good girl.

I found a gun once while cleaning someones apartment in New York. It was under the bed where the pornography should be, wrapped in a T-shirt, and it was in my lap before I realized what it was. Then I froze, the way I might have had it been a bomb. Eventually, very carefully, I nudged it back into place, wondering what the person who owned this looked like, for I had never met him.

I used to think that guys with beards had guns. Then I realized by asking around that guys with beards had fathers who owned guns. It was amazing how spot-on this was. I once met an Asian American fellow with a very sketchy goateeno more than a dozen eyelash-length hairs on his chinand when I guessed that his dad had bullets but no gun, he said, Oh my God. How did you know?

This was before beards came back into style and everyone grew one. Now I think that guys who wear baseball caps with their sunglasses perched on the brims have guns, ifand this is importantthe lenses of those sunglasses are mirrored or fade from orange to yellow, like a tequila sunrise. As for women, I have no idea.

Lonnie had moved on by this point and was teaching us how to pick up our guns. Like most people raised on water pistols and dart-shooting plastic Lugers, we automatically reached for the triggers, a no-no in the Big Book of Safety. These weapons absolutely cannot fire unless you tug that little piece of metal, Lonnie said.

They cant go off if you drop them? I asked.

Absolutely not, he told me. Almost never. So go on, David, pick up your Glock.

I screwed up my courage and did as instructed.

Good job!

When it was Lisas turn, her finger went straight for the trigger.