Short Story: The Legacy of Queso Champ

The Legacy of Queso Champ

This one’s for the Booze Houndz

Back in elementary school, Queso Champ snuck around the bar of the cafeteria and swiped a whole package of Kraft Singles when none of the cafeteria ladies where looking. He ran back over to our table and devoured the entire pack in under a minute—the previous record, set the week before by Huevo Licker Randy, was two and a half.

You know, I remember less and less about Queso Champ every day since he died nearly a decade ago. It wasn’t ‘til my ten-year-old girl veered over to the bright bags of string cheese in the dairy section of HEB when I spotted the dozen packages of Kraft Singles in the cooler. I grab a package and remember that one lunchtime long ago in Singer Elementary School when Roberto Nuñez gobbled down sixteen slices of cheese and was crowned “Queso Champ”. At 37, it’s a memory I’m ashamed l forgot.

***

After my parents got divorced in 2003, my Tía Antonia let my mom and I move in with her and her girl Brianna in Thornton City. Queso Champ was one of my first homeboys when I started third grade at Singer Elementary, but he and I became best friends because of something that happened a week after the cheese incident. It was pretty scary. I walked into the boy’s bathroom and found him on his side lying still on the floor. He was having a seizure (and I only knew it was a seizure ‘cause Brianna was like that) on the little brown tiles in a puddle of his own pee—his pants and shirt soaked in piss. I ran out to grab our teacher. Nobody knew Queso Champ was epileptic—it was his first seizure. Everyone at the school said I was a hero and that I saved his life. The lunch ladies even gave me a free ice cream sandwich that lunch, after they took Queso Champ to the hospital. His parents wanted to thank me, too, so after school that Friday they invited me to eat with them at CiCi’s pizza. Then, while he was chomping down on a slice of pepperoni pizza, Queso Champ got the idea to set up his little tent in his backyard so he and I could camp out overnight. I told him it sounded like an exciting idea, so they drove me to their home and I learned then that Queso Champ’s dad, Senior Nuñez, ran a small gig as a local mechanic from out their garage. Every weekend after that, Queso Champ and I learned from Senior Nuñez how to work on cars until the guy finally opened up his own shop down the road. Queso Champ and I also camped outside in the backyard tent until we got too tall to lie down inside of it.

***

Because we met so many new kids by the time we got into Thornton High School, Roberto stopped going by the name “Queso Champ.” People just started calling him Roberto, even those of us who sat there at the table in Singer Elementary when he broke Randy’s record (to be fair, we also dropped the title of “Huevo Licker” from Randy’s name around this time, too). And so he introduced himself as Roberto when he met Jessica Richardson in French class. The three of us were all Freshman when Roberto and I both fell in love with Jessica. She didn’t have big boobs or a great ass, but her face and long, straight black hair was the prettiest thing either of us had ever seen while growing up in Thornton City. We both said she looked like a younger version of Olivia Munn from Attack of the Show! on G4. Her smile would just kill me.

Everyone that Roberto met at Thornton High School would say he should play for the Varsity Baseball team. He had the athletic build and although he looked like a younger, browner Tony Romo, Roberto’s face was always concentrated beneath his Rangers baseball cap—like he was ready to step up to the plate at any moment. But the physician told him he couldn’t play for the school on the account of his epilepsy. Either way, Roberto would still go work out with his friends on the baseball team after school. On Fridays, the boys would have sparring matches in the locker room. They’d use gloves, of course, but Roberto knocked out both Tony Cortez and Andrew Hunter this way. Tony and Andrew were big guys who’d show up in the big league, but I heard that Roberto got ‘em both with a good blow square in their livers. And I think that’s why Jessica started dating Roberto. During our sophomore year, Jessica told us that Tony tried to force himself on her and that pissed Roberto off. So, that next Friday, Roberto called out Tony in the locker room and told him to lace up his boxing gloves—he was dead set on laying Tony out. It must have been an incredibly embarrassing ending for Tony ‘cause he transferred out of Thornton High the next week. Then I started seeing Jessica hold hands with Roberto. Seeing that felt like a punch to my own liver, so I really didn’t want to talk to either of them anymore. He returned the favor when he didn’t show up to my seventeenth birthday party.

***

During senior year, Mrs. Dubois, the Math teacher, asked two freshmen to stay after school and replace all the double A batteries in the yellow TI-84 calculators so that they’d be fresh and ready for the next year. There must have a thousand batteries to replace, but the freshmen got caught smoking weed in the bathroom. While they sat in cuffs in the main office, Mrs. DuBois begged me and Kazimir Sierra after AP Calculus class to stay past the bell and switch out the batteries – she said she’d bring us drinks from Sonic for the trouble. She and all the others students left but changing out the batteries in Mrs. Dubois’ classroom got dreadful right after the first calculator. I turned to Kaz and asked him: “So—what’d you do this weekend?”

“Nothing, really,” he said, ripping open a new box of batteries. “I went to the theater with Jessica on Friday night, but that’s it.”

I dropped the battery I was holding between my thumb and index finger and it made a pop when it hit the floor. Kaz turned to look at me when he noticed I was standing still and not bending over to rescue the fallen battery. “Jessica who?” I asked him.

“Jessica Richardson, I think,” he answered. “She’s a senior here.”

“Yeah—Jessica—I know her,” I said. “Was it a date? What did y’all do?”

“Yeah, I mean I’d say it was a date,” Kaz explained, “we kissed a lot during the movie and we got a little frisky at the end, and. . .” He started looking me in the eyes and I could see confusion growing behind his black pupils.

“And what?” I asked.

“She told me to touch her.”

“Are you fucking serious?”

“Yeah, why? What’s wrong?”

“Dude, Kaz, Jessica’s with Roberto. They’ve been dating for, like, three years now!”

“You’re joking, right?” Kaz said. His mouth started to gape and his eyes squinted—the same face Mrs. Dubois made when I told her the freshmen got busted. “Dude, Seb, she never said anything about having a boyfriend. Who the fuck is Roberto?”

“Roberto Nuñez, dude,” I said, “he’s a senior here too.” I forgot all about changing the batteries and tried to imagine what Roberto was doing on Friday night—how did he not know Jessica went out with some other guy on a Friday night? What did she tell Roberto? “I’ve know the guy since elementary school.” I turned away from Kaz and stared at the yellow calculator in my hands.

“Shit, dude, I didn’t know she wasn’t single” Kaz said, “I mean, we flirt with each other a lot in Mrs. Kilgore’s class.” I knew Kaz wasn’t an asshole who’d scheme to steal another guy’s girl. He was an honest, decent kind of dude. On my seventeenth birthday, he was the only guy who showed up to my party and my mom wouldn’t stop thanking him. And, a year after we all graduated, Kaz would invite me out to visit him at Faraday University. That trip would be the reason why I applied to Faraday during my last semester of community college. But we stood there, frozen next to each other in Mrs. DuBois’ classroom. We said nothing. We just listened to the echoes of the baseball team’s practice flow in through the window from outside. We heard shouting and yelling and the cracking of balls against the bats and, occasionally, off a fence. I could see white baseballs flying all throughout space. Then I thought I saw Roberto bust through the door, ready to pounce and whale on Kaz, to beat his ass—and I would have been shocked ‘cause I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold Roberto back but I would still have to do something because it wasn’t all Kaz’s fault. But it was just Mrs. Dubois with two big foam cups—our cherry limeades—in her hands.

***

If you ever get your hands on a copy of the 2013 Thornton High School Yearbook, I can show a page with a funny photo on it. It’s a tradition at Thornton for all the seniors to grab a paint roller and wet their palms with the color blue—the school’s color. Then you walk over to a huge canvas banner and press your wet palm down and leave a handprint. Someone would hand you a black Sharpie and you’d put your signature next to your blue hand. I was in line behind Roberto and Jessica to place my handprint on the canvas. Because they were dating, they put their handprints next to each other’s. The bottom part of their palms were joined together so that it looked like a clumsy Morpho butterfly – Roberto’s left hand was the left wing and Jessica’s right hand was the right wing. I saw the butterfly and it made me sick. But the photographer for the yearbook club, Angie Romero, was a friend of Jessica and took a great photo of the moment when Roberto and Jessica where kneeling down together to make the butterfly. They both had big smiles. But I’m there in that photo too, off on the right side putting my handprint down. I’m all blurred out ‘cause the focus was on Roberto and Jessica, but there I am. And every time I see it, I can’t help but laugh at what happened right after that photo. We all had to walk outside over to a water hose to wash the blue paint off from our hands. I got there before Roberto and Jessica. I washed the paint off my hand but I held onto the hose. A soft stream of water flowed from the mouth of the hose and the ground started getting muddy. Then Roberto walked up to me first, reaching out to take the hose. But I gripped the thing harder and I felt my knuckles get tight.

“Hey Jessica,” I said, “How was Friday night?”

I saw the question shock Jessica and she made an expression that made her eye sockets grow wider. Roberto stared at me.

“What’chu mean, Seb?” he asked.

“Jessica went out with Kaz on Friday night,” I said.

Roberto cocked up his chin and his glare grew harder. Even in the uneven mud, he looked like a boxer standing on a solid stage.

As soon as I saw him shift his shoulder back to clock me, I expected him to stick me right in the liver like he did with Tony and Andrew. So I shut my eyes and tensed up my gut. I knew it was all over then—there was no way I was gonna land a punch on Roberto. I’m just glad he did it quickly—he socked me on the chin instead and I fell over onto my side and on the muddy grass. I dropped the hose and the water spilled onto my shirt and pants and I got soaked as water ran all over the soggy ground around me. I stayed there while Roberto reached down to grab the hose to wash his hand.

***

Jessica got into some fancy private university on the east coast. Roberto wasn’t smart enough to get into any sort of college, but I’m sure he begged his parents to let him move out there with Jessica. The idiot had no money or way to support himself. Senior Nuñez wanted Roberto to work at and take over the mechanic shop he opened up when we were kids—it sounded like the perfect path for Roberto. So, Jessica let Roberto go, of course. Then in August, before her first semester started, Jessica moved away for good. Roberto drove to Jessica’s house to say goodbye but it was her little sister, Sandra, who opened the door and told him Jessica was already gone. So he started working with his dad and I started going to community college. Roberto and I didn’t speak to each other until the summer of 2015 when we ran into each other at the gas station behind his house.

***

It was Randy, actually, who first got in touch with me back in 2022 and told me that Roberto had died. Randy bumped into my mom at the old Michoacana on Holloway Avenue. He asked her for my cell phone number and I bet my mom had the old school decency to write it down for him on a page ripped from the vinyl address book she’s had since before I was born. Usually, when I see an unknown number pop up on my screen, I ignore it. But at that time, I thought it may have been a pediatric cardiologist calling from Houston—I should have recognized the first three digits of the number as Thornton City’s area code. So, I answered the call with some curiosity. My conversation with Randy went something like:

“Hello?”

“Hey! Sebastián! This is Randy, how ya been, man?”

“Ay! Randy!” I was joyfully surprised to hear an old homeboy’s voice. “I’m alright man, I’m out here in Austin. I’m just doin’ some work. I do construction management, now. It’s stressful, bro. How ‘bout you, man, how are you?

“I’m alright, man, I’m still here in Thornton, workin’ en el taller—that’s what I need to talk to you about, man. . .”

“What’s up dude?

“It’s Roberto” I listened to Randy inhale. “Se murió. Three days ago.”

I remember keeping quiet. We were both quiet, actually. I thought about something Roberto told me once at Lake Raymond in 2015. Finally, I asked him: “Que paso?”

“N’hombre güey, he was working late on Monday night at his pop’s shop—you remember the one, right? They told me he was working by himself on the timing belt of some car. But he got a seizure and fell over onto the engine. His arm got caught in the belt while the engine was running. The belt cut up his arm real nasty, but he couldn’t move. He just stayed there under the hood with his arm bleeding. His pop found him the next morning. He bled out, bro.” I imagined a big pool of blood on the smooth cement floor of the shop, but I questioned if it should be darker than the red pool I was picturing. There must have been some oil on the ground too, so it must have been a darker puddle of blood.

I kept quiet. I remember almost asking Randy about what color he thought the puddle might have been, but he spoke up: “We’re having the funeral service this Saturday. I know it’s short notice and all, but his parents asked us all to invite his friends. I saw your mom in La Michoacana and she gave me your number.”

“This Saturday?”

“Yeah, at St. James Catholic Church. Off Thornton Freeway.” St. James is in a ghetto part of town, a place where the sky is always overcast. Randy worked in the tire shop next to the church. “I know you’re in Austin, but—”

“I don’t think I can make it, bro. My baby girl’s got a heart problem so me and Samantha going to a specialist in Houston—”

“You’ve got a baby?!” It took Randy more than a second to exactly realize what I said. “That’s awesome bro! Your mom didn’t tell me ‘bout that!”

“Yeah! She’s two months, now, but she’s got this thing with her heart—”

“N’hombre güey, I’m sorry to hear that. I see. Na, man, don’t worry about going to the funeral, bro, take care of your girl, first. What’s her name?

“Alejandra”

“N’hombre, I hope everything turns out okay, bro. I’ll pray for your girl, man.”

“Thanks, man. I appreciate it.” You know, I wasn’t religious then and I’m not religious now. I haven’t been into it since Brianna’s seventh birthday party. I watched Tía Antonia take some shots from the Jose Cuervo Tradicional bottle she kept “hidden” in her closet. Then I heard Tía tell my mom that Brianna’s birthday wish was “for God to stop the seizures.” My drunken Tía told my mom God was just a cruel joke. It was the first time I heard someone challenge God and I immediately sat down ‘cause I was scared. I thought I would have a seizure right then and there for just listening to Tía. But I was okay. I didn’t tip over into unconsciousness. And Samantha swears it was God that cured baby Alejandra of the congenital defect, but I like to think that Alejandra is just strong. I wanted a boy, you know? A boy who’d end up first in class at West Point. But I got a girl—a beautiful baby girl who fought to live with an actual, broken heart for over two months. Roberto could deal with his seizures well, but not a broken heart. I told Randy: “You know it was Queso Champ who first called you Huevo Licker, remember?”

Randy didn’t respond. I don’t think he recognized his old nickname.

“Remember?” I asked him again, “one time, when we were still at Singer, we all dared you to tell the old substitute to lick your heuvos? So when she told us we couldn’t go outside for recess, you did and the whole class started laughing? When you got back from suspension, Queso Champ was like, ‘Ay, welcome back Huevo Licker!’”

“Yeah. Yeah man.” Randy’s serious tone made me think he didn’t find it amusing the way I did. “I remember.”

***

In that last summer I spent in Thornton before I moved three hours away to go to Faraday University—the summer of 2015—Roberto and I spotted each other in the check-out line at the gas station behind his house. I could tell he just got out from his dad’s shop because of how dirty he looked. I could only stare at the oil and grease stains that covered his beer belly while he apologized for knocking me out that day back in senior year. I would have said “Ay man, no worries” and shook his hand just out of the fact that we’ve spent more years of our lives being best friends and homeboys than, well, what would you call it? Strangers? But it was the broken look on his face that made me say: “You doin’ alright, bro?” He still had on a Rangers ball cap, but he had lost that cool composure he had in high school and gained more than a few pounds. He no longer looked like a brown Tony Romo. Instead, it looked like Jessica broke Roberto into a hundred little pieces and he spent the last two years of his life gluing himself back together with booze. I could tell Jessica stole all the glory from Roberto when she left.

He offered to buy me a twelve pack of Shiner Bock and so we could knock ‘em back and catch up on life. He said he knew a spot over by Lake Raymond where we could sit, drink and talk. We parked by the lake and I followed him to some big rocks by the shore. While we were walking through the ugly, sticky grass to the shore, I noticed that he moved like a stray old dog searching desperately for a place to lie down. Once we sat down and started gazing out across the lake, we popped open our first cans. We watched the sky shift from baby-blue to orange and purple in the sunset. It was warm that evening and we both stayed a little sweaty from that short walk to the shore and we got buzzed while watching some kids swim out in the lake. When I tossed away my fifth empty beer can, I turned around a saw a group of kids in folding chairs passing a blunt around about ten feet behind us. They didn’t care about tokin’ up in public—I didn’t care either, honestly. Once I turned back around to the lake, Roberto asked me: “Do you know what I wanna do?”

“What?” I asked, reaching inside the box for my last can.

“I wanna take that gun I have at home and call the cops.” I turned to look at Roberto and noticed thin wet trails, like slivers, dripping from his eyes. It glared against the black dust that stained his cheeks, dark blemishes he earned from hours in the shop. He exhaled, then continued, “I wanna calls the cops and have them come over. Then I’m gonna go outside and point it at them.” He took in some of that humid air standing around him.

“So they can shoot you,” I whispered, finishing the sentence for him. I popped open the tab on my can.

“Yeah,” he said. He took a long sip from his can and for a minute neither of us said anything. I watched him cry for a little while but he never did sob. He just wiped away those little trails under his eyes with his free hand. And I’m sure that sometimes, over the next eight years, Roberto would get drunk by himself, sit down on the little porch at the front of his house, hold his pistol in his lap with one hand and use the other to key in 911 on his cellphone. But over the course of eight years, he never did hit dial. Instead, when he’s 27, he’ll be adjusting the timing belt of a stubborn old car in his dad’s shop. I wonder what Roberto was thinking about right before his final seizure—that Morpho butterfly he made with Jessica? Texas Rangers baseball? The nights he and I slept in his little tent in the backyard? I really hope his final thought wasn’t wasted on some damn little rubber timing belt.

***

I turn to look at my girl who’s been waiting on me this whole time. She’s been standing by my side after she tossed a bag of string cheese into the shopping cart. But I see Queso Champ instead. I see Queso Champ tearing through all that clear plastic film, rolling the perfect squares of cheese into yellow balls with his sweaty palms and popping them into his mouth. And I want to be nine years old again, smiling and laughing so damn hard that I go breathless and start to cry as Queso Champs rips open a new slice of cheese. I want to feel again that hard plastic round seat I bounced up and down on as all the kids from the other tables tried to push around us to watch Queso Champ break Huevo Licker Randy’s record. I want to hear everyone yelling and cheering Queso Champ on until the angry old lunch monitor yells at us and tell everyone to go back to their seats and shut up or else we wouldn’t get to go outside to the playground for recess. And I want to see Queso Champ swallow the sixteenth and final ball of cheese and then puke it all up over the old grey lunch table and make a huge, bright superhero grin.

I put the package of Kraft Singles back down into the bottom of the cooler and walk back to the cart. My beautiful baby girl follows me. I grab and look at the green bag of string cheese that she tossed into the cart. 12 Sticks. Then I ask my girl: “Hey champ, how long do you think it’ll take for you to eat this whole thing?”

She smiles like a superhero.