Death in the Afternoon—Or So I Thought

It was a blustery, overcast April day in El Valle and recovering from a sore back I decided to get in the hot tub early, before dark.

The hot tub, you may ask? Yes, I have an electric hot tub, which my orthopedically challenged body dearly loves. For many years we had a wood fired hot tub, a Snorkel (a second) that was shipped down to New Mexico from Seattle after a trip there to visit Mark’s brother. Every evening around dusk Mark went out and made a fire in the submersible stove, and every night we got in the often 110 degree water (it’s hard to regulate the temperature burning pine, piñon, and juniper) with the kids, neighbors, and friends, winter and summer, Orion and the Big Dipper overhead, new moons and full moons, owls hooting and cows lowing, freezing cold and snow, and mild summer evenings with enough chill to warrant a soak.

After many years the tub deteriorated, the stays warped, the firewood became more precious (meaning the cutting and splitting became more of a chore), and keeping the fires burning on sub-zero nights intimidating. So for a while we did without. Then, as these things happen, we decided it was OK to buy a used hot tub, nothing fancy, no push button settings, no fancy jets, no multi-colored lights, but yes, one that you plugged in and voila, the water got hot!

And that’s where I was yesterday afternoon when the wind whipped the cover, half opened, closed, with just enough room for me to scrunch down without being slapped upside the head and knocked out. At least that’s what passed through my mind as I reflexively lifted my arms to catch the impact of the cover, while the water splashed up over my face and hair with the aftertaste of chemicals (albeit a mild dosing, as I’m the only regular customer).

Other thoughts went through my mind as well. One, I was glad I hadn’t gotten around to adding water to raise the below-optimal water level, which is always a pain in the butt because I do it with buckets of hot water from the bathtub so I can use gas instead of electricity to make up the temperature difference. I’d somehow hurt my lower back in Albuquerque the weekend before with Jakob and Casey and their grad school friends where I exercised nothing but my brain and vocal cords at a secular seder that was both irreverent and relevant, which is why I hadn’t filled the tub and why I was in it before dark.

Two, I wondered how long I could have held the cover up with my arms. If it had been the cover I’d just replaced, I wouldn’t have been able to hold it up at all—water soaked, frozen foam is very heavy—so I would have been in there with a pocket of air to breathe between water and cover.

With this thought in mind I got out of the tub and found a rock to put on top of the open cover. I really wanted to be in the tub as the water felt so good on my sore back. But what if the wind blew the rock up off the cover and knocked it onto my head?

That lead to thought number three. I wondered how long it would have taken for someone to find me, dead or barely alive, and if Paco would be OK until that happened. He has a dog door, so he has access to food, and there is plenty of water in the acequia. Would he sit there patiently by the closed hot tub, knowing I was in there, or would he, like Lassie, somehow know enough to run around barking until someone heard him and stopped by?

That someone would be Tony, my neighbor, because he comes over most nights to get water from my outside pump, which is right by the hot tub. He has no water in his trailer—the water line from the pump at his father-in-law’s house is broken somewhere—and he would hear me call out “Tony, Tony, I’m stuck in the hot tub” or wonder why Paco was frantically barking. Luckily I had a bathing suit on because if I get in the tub during the day I take that precaution. But he might decide to get water at someone else’s house that night, and there I would be, in the hot tub, in the dark.

Well, the wind did indeed pick up the rock and throw it off the cover but it landed on the deck instead of my head and I decided that was enough and got my sorry ass out of the tub and locked down the cover. Then the rain started and it lasted most of the night and this morning everything is lush and green and the wind isn’t blowing so I’m now getting back in the hot tub. End of story.