David W. Landrum

Beer Joints

There was Christo’s Club, the Pair o’ Dice,
the Ben Hur Tavern, one called The Local Bar.
My mother called them beer joints.
“Why do they call it a ‘joint’?” we asked.
She shrugged. “Don’t know—joints good and evil, I guess.”
Hard men went in them, men who had come north
from the south in search of work, found it,
but found a lot they had not bargained for.
A nest of beer joints stood on Vaile Avenue,
just by Ohio street—small structures mostly,
frame and board. They could have been
houses, once perhaps had been.
They always were encased with cars and pickups
parked along the streets. People went in and out.
Once, on my bicycle, I caught the words
of two long, stringy women walking toward
the door of Christo’s Club.
“You gonna raise some hell tonight?” one ask.
I did not hear the other one’s reply.
Jess and the Jokers, a country cover-band,
played every weekend night at Christo’s.
Men like my father went there, men
worn out with work but men without
a language of despair. My father
drank to make my mother weep.
The silence of his drinking filled our house.