He was the only man who I used to be terribly scared of when I was growing up in Gouyave. The article Ronnie wrote about Leader Gabriel could easily be me telling a similar story about Gifford, but with a different twist.
Gifford always had that "don't mess me with me because I'm CAPABLE of doing ANYTHING" look about him. In fact he was the person who immediately came to my mind when I first read about the character "Red Skin Joe" that Huck Finn was so afraid of in the novel Tom Sawyer. Yet Gifford never ever did nor said anything to scare me. Whenever he visited his relative's home, Anetha Mitchell, he would make jokes with Selwyn, Alwyn (Bascome) and me. Yet I couldn't shake off that real fear of the man.
When Gifford came back to Gouyave after serving a very long prison sentence at Richmond Hill (Pardon me if I'm wrong, but I believe it was for killing somebody), the "badjohn" aura grew even more real. I deliberately avoided talking to the man and walked on the other side of the road with my eyes down to avoid any pleasantries. I was still that scared. That is until one day Gifford approached me, and I'm paraphrasing his response as best as I can remember, "Tony, I always knew you were afraid of me, but why because I never gave you any reason to be scared. I always treated you the same way I treated my little cousins (Selwyn & Alwyn and Kuirks). Remember I used to give you all "hot tors" (marbles) when you all were small. I like you just as much as I like them, and Tana Boudere and Muen (his younger brothers) are your good friends, so don't be scared of me. I went to prison but I am the same Gifford."
I was still afraid but as time passed on whatever it was that used to make me so deathly afraid of Gifford began to simply fade away. His eyes were still very piercingly red but they were no longer so because he was the devil incarnate. They were red because his life on the ocean made them so. His skin that was almost as black as pitch no longer brought shivers down my spine for fear he might harm me. In my awakening from fear, his skin was no darker than Leslie Marcelle's, one of my elementary school teachers whom I admired so much, and whom I thought had the smoothest and prettiest black skin I'd ever seen.
When I saw Gifford last year, we greeted each other warmly. He told me about Kiurks never returning from the ocean, and how easily it could have been him. He told me how much the Gouyave I grew up in had changed especially with the use of drugs by the youths. Truly, for the first time since knowing Gifford, I saw a decent human being who made his living the best way he knew how. A man who made some serious mistakes but was man enough to stand up, brush off all the dirt that piled on him when he fell down, and lived his life in the best way he knew.
Tana, Muen, Selo and Bascome, please accept my condolences on the passing of Gifford. He was indeed another of those legendary Gouyave characters that continue to make me smile whenever when I recall my boyhood days in Gouyave. R.I.P.