The Idaho Jacket

The Idaho Jacket: (click link for full story)

Prism International (Spring, 1973)
Roll of Honor, Best American Short Stories 1974

Charles Deemer

RICHARD, realize one thing: I am beginning to wear the Idaho jacket comfortably now. Perhaps I'm not wearing it as comfortably as you would have, had genetics not played its tricks on us all and given the second son, and not the first, the bulky characteristics of the father. To Buck, I gather, biology remains so much scientific claptrap and when he gave you the jacket he did so knowing it was not your size. But you had asked for the jacket as a kid, the story goes, and so when you turned twenty-one, Buck gave it to you. And I have no quarrel with any of this past history, Richard, not even as I wear the jacket today. Frankly for a long time I did not understand why you gave me the jacket, particularly with the gesture by which it became mine. Not understanding, I was unable to wear the jacket comfortably. I wore it, yes, but rather with the self-consciousness with which a timid boy will wear a Halloween costume. That soon may be history, too."

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The inspiration for this story is an actual jacket, a green and black checkered Folsom, that was given to my best buddy Dick by his stepdad Buck but which was too big for Dick. Later he passed it on to me, and I wore it constantly even on warm So Cal days. It became a part of me. (Everything else in the story is "made up" and true).