Cibiche

     It was 7:30 a.m. on the first Monday morning in August and Cibiche was wiping down the plastic tables at the Café de la Fontaine off avenue du Minervois in Caunes.

     Cibiche's real name was Jean, but everybody called him after the perennial cigarette stub that hung from his thick lips, smoked intermittently down to the filter.  No one knew his age, nor much about him, other than that he was from Lespinassière, eleven kilometers up the road in the Montagne Noir.   Cibiche wiped down the tables in the morning, moved them as needed, in return for a morning beer, which he drank with the other alcoholics for whom the Café de la Fontaine was a second home.

     Cibiche, with his black hair cut close to the skull, dark eyes and sun-browned skin could have been a wolf-cub in human form.  He spoke little, often growling his words, and everyone knew to steer clear,  although his bad humors were short-lived and limited to epithets, as when he referred to the Café de la Fontaine as that putain bar because Marie-Jo, the barmaid, told Cibiche to put out his cigarette if he was going to stand at the bar.

     It was not much of a bar, but it was the one place in Caunes that opened early and closed late with no afternoon shut down.  The rugby club met there to watch matches, the tourists sat and drank café crèmes, locals bought a newspaper or a Loto or cigarettes.  Once the ban on smoking in bars and restaurants was imposed agents began monitoring compliance, even in small villages in the Midi.  The Café de la Fontaine was closed for several days for not abiding by the regulations.  After that, anyone who wanted to smoke had to do so outside, which gave rise to Cibiche's denunciation.

     Outside, commiserating with the other smokers by a nod of his head, whenever anyone said anything critical of the government or the inspectors, Cibiche took a sip of his beer and felt better.