Every Night at 2 a.m., the Same Caller Asked My Radio Station to Play the Same Song for “Rosa.” He Never Gave His Name. After 300 Nights, I Found Out Who Rosa Was

My show ended at six. By seven, I was driving north into the Davis Mountains in my old Bronco with a thermos of coffee and a printout of three hundred phone calls.

Hector came with me. He said he wanted to see who’d been listening all these years.

The cell tower covered six ranches. The first four had never heard of Ernesto Elizondo. At the fifth, a foreman pointed us up a dirt road.

“Old Ernie,” he said. “Lives in a trailer on the north line. Breaks colts for us. Keeps to himself. Haven’t seen him in a couple of days, now that you mention it.”

The trailer was at the end of three miles of washboard road, alone in a valley of yucca and red rock, with a corral, a water tank and one sorrel horse who whinnied when we pulled up.

There was no answer when I knocked.

The door was unlocked.

He was lying on the floor beside his bed. Alive. Very weak. Dehydrated. He’d fallen two nights earlier and broken his hip and couldn’t reach the phone.

On the little table by the bed was an old transistor radio, tuned to 93.1 FM.

KMRF.

Hector called 911 from the road. The helicopter took forty minutes. While we waited, I sat on the floor beside Ernesto and gave him water a little at a time from the cap of the thermos.

He looked up at me.

“I know that voice,” he whispered. “You’re Santi.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You played the song last night?”

“I played it, sir. I didn’t know where you were.”

He closed his eyes.

“Did you play it for her?”

I hesitated.

“Mr. Elizondo,” I said. “I talked to Rosa last night.”

His eyes opened. All the way.

“Rosa’s dead,” he said. “My Rosa. She died. I read it in the paper. Nine years ago. I couldn’t go to the funeral. I didn’t deserve to.”

“Not that Rosa,” I said. “Your daughter.”