The digital thermometer in the Blazer’s dash read forty-one degrees Fahrenheit. We’d rolled into town just after two A.M. and followed the GPS up into the hills overlooking town. I found an empty cul-de-sac awaiting tract homes and shut the car down for the night. Over in the passenger seat, the kid was beginning to stir. The heater was blowing cold air, so I turned it off and started the engine. Took a full five minutes on high for the fan to chase the frost from the windshield. The Lewiston Valley rolled out before us like a frozen quilt. I’d looked up Clarkston on the Internet, before we left Seattle last night. Strange kinda place. Sits in one state, but really belongs to another. Clarkston was really just a suburb of Lewiston, Idaho. Lewiston, which bills itself as Idaho’s Only Port, provided all of what would generally be considered Clarkston’s “city services.” Clarkston, however, maintained both a vestige of independence and a slice of Washington state’s considerably more lucrative tax pie, by maintaining its own independent school district and a substation of the Asotin County Sheriff’s Department.
