On the Genealogy of Wisconsin Cheeses

Since an early age the twins found their father Trevor to be choleric, choleric being the exact term they each used when being cross-examined by the district attorney. The charge was simple enough, felony murder. Trevor had been at his desk working when they killed him. He was always working at his desk. This was one of the reasons why their mother Muriel had eventually left him, because he was trying to write an exhaustive history of Wisconsin cheesemaking.

Muriel insisted that it was a useless endeavor.

“No one cares. Minor arcana,” she said to Trevor.

“No. Major arcana. Major.”

“I must be kept in furs. The twins will be wanting furs of their own when they are of age.”

“What do you propose I do?”

Muriel handed him a stack of Japanese hentai she’d taken from a man down at the wharf. “Translate these.”

“I don’t speak Japanese.”

“Apply yourself.”

“My mother was right to try to stop our marriage. How I regret that you ran her over with your sports utility vehicle. How I regret giving you a credible alibi.”

“Oh, pooh pooh. Translate these and we can make a fortune among the wicked and perverse,” said Muriel. She was wearing her sable coat now, and only her sable coat, in order to entice Trevor. He ignored her and returned to his history of Wisconsin cheeses. Muriel left Trevor later that day and fourteen years later, having come of age and realizing their father had not procured fur coats for the occasion, the twins had stabbed Trevor in a frenzy, stolen his wallet and were later apprehended by the police at Nordstrom.

Trevor Bleick didn’t come to my Super Bowl party. He said he wasn’t feeling up to it even though I had made a biryani and bought new paddles for table tennis. Fuck him. Fuck that guy. He is from Wisconsin and is inordinately proud of this fact.

The Oregon Trail

The Maxtons enjoyed telling dinner guests they were siblings who had fallen in love on some soggy patch of sorghum all those winters ago, and that they had to murder their mother and father in order to keep their affair a secret—with poison. Usually this caused people to rush off suddenly, without delay, with a thousand apologies despite Jessica bringing out the brandy and cake on a silver platter. The last time she cackled as the Chatterjees practically tripped over themselves gathering their coats and frantically calling an Uber. When they had finally left she served her husband cake and brandy but Ian touched neither.

“I think I’m bored with it. I’m bored with the charade,” he said.

“Only boring people are boring,” Jessica reminded Ian so he resumed doing hard drugs: coke, heroin and crystal meth, his favorite. He called up the Chatterjees the next day and told them, “Hey, don’t tell anyone about Jessica and me, right? Or else I’ll come find you. I know where you live. I know which bowling alley you drink at. She’s my sister but I can’t help it. Ma and Pa tried to stop us, said it were unnatural. But how can love be unnatural?” He hung up the phone and laughed and laughed. Jessica laughed. The dog laughed. Ian loved the life of a raconteur. The Chatterjees didn’t go out anymore and their neighbors thought to themselves, it’s the national climate, the xenophobia, when really it was just Ian. Classic Ian.
            
One night while high on crystal meth, Ian broke into a local elementary school’s computer lab and started playing Oregon Trail. “Where are the native peoples!” Ian kept screaming, clobbering the computer monitor with his fist. Then he started smashing up and throwing around all the computers and monitors and external zip drives and keyboards, igniting an electrical fire which spread rapidly because they had recently removed all the asbestos from the ceiling. He died from severe smoke inhalation.

Ian and Jessica insisted on watching the Super Bowl Halftime show, in lieu of playing a quick round robin of table tennis. And when the game ended they immediately began helping to clear the dishes and platters, citing the need to get home and feed their cats and get ready for the work week, preempting once again the possibility of table tennis.

El Mosquito

Doctor Bajaj soon become a fixture of the senior men’s circuit of the South American table tennis tour. In Brazil he was called O Mosquito Bêbado, The Drunken Mosquito. At the bar of his five-star hotel in Rio de Janeiro—a palace of mahogany and polished mirrors, of maturing pageboys and lonely widows—he had discovered an affinity for cachaça, the local spirit. His game did not suffer at all from his drinking. In fact, commentators say he had improved actually, since he won the Sugarloaf Invitational in straight sets against Al Houssebni, the Damascene legend who had only come out of retirement to face Bajaj. Such a feat was unprecedented. Doctor Bajaj then signed a number of professional sponsorship deals with Dewar’s scotch, Casio watches and even Copersucar, Brazil’s largest exporter of sugar. Having earned more than enough to retire ten times over, Doctor Bajaj sailed off into the sunset.
            Doctor Bajaj was a family friend and he hosted the Super Bowl party every year. He had a table tennis set up in his basement where the kids would flock during halftime. Doctor Bajaj was born in Ferozepur, India in 1932 and moved to Wichita, Kansas in the late 1960s. Per his obituary: “At the time the Bajajs moved to Wichita, there were seven or eight families of Indian origin in Wichita. ‘Papa Ji’ looked for Indian names in the phone book, and whenever a new Indian family came to Wichita, a get-together was held to introduce them to others. Dr. Bajaj helped build a sense of community among South Asians within Wichita.” —Downing & Lahey Mortuaries & Crematory  



Avee Chaudhuri grew up in Wichita, Kansas. His stories have appeared recently at 3:AM Magazine, Southwest Review, and Farewell Transmission. “The Oregon Trail” was initially published as a stand-alone piece by Bone Machine in a commemorative chapbook for the Charm City reading that took place in Baltimore on March 6, 2026 and was organized by Jen Ostopovich and Scott Laudati. A good time was had by all.

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