After the death of his mother, a boy and his sister start spending more time at their uncle’s house. Uncle Clint is not one of those mysterious, long-lost uncles. He only lives a few blocks away and is the owner of debt-ridden dry goods store. Even as a child, the boy understood that Uncle Clint’s ramshackle home signaled the bad and the poor, in comparison to his grandmother’s good and rich house. On a visit to his grandmother’s house, the boy’s father shows him a picture of two young men in swimming suits. They are Owen and Lloyd, his grandmother’s brothers who went missing in the ocean. The story goes that a shark fin circled Lloyd while he was swimming, and Owen did not hesitate before jumping in to save his brother. Neither of them made it back, and Owen’s swimming cap washed up on the shore. As a lesson to his son, the father assures the boy that a moment will come when he must be like Owen and remember how he did not wait or pause.   Meanwhile, the boy continues spending time with Uncle Clint, and they go on fishing trips together. Unlike the rest of the family, Uncle Clint was a terrible swimmer with a fear of deep water. When Uncle Clint’s store faces foreclosure, there is a falling out between him and the boy’s father and grandmother. He takes the boy out to the river for one last boat ride, only to find that two women are stealing the boat. As they escape down the river, one of the boat’s patches comes loose, and they start to sink. The two women cannot swim, and Uncle Clint jumps in and rescues them both. That fearful but unhesitating rescue is one of the last memories of Uncle Clint the boy can recall. As a soldier in war years later, the boy receives a letter from his father with a memento relating to his courageous uncle. He immediately thinks back on that memory of Uncle Clint but does not believe his father would have known about the incident. The memento enclosed with the letter is Owen’s black cap, but it takes him a while before he is able to recognize what it is.