Saving Nails

I strip the porch roof, pick out the used nails, and toss the shingles down onto a drop cloth, remembering when I shingled my grandmother's roof fifty years ago: the tar smell, the brackets, planks, and ladders all the same, but level now with hemlock limbs instead of locust. I lug four shingles up the ladder, kneel and drive the old nails home, slide another shingle into place, pound, toes bent, knees creaking.Miserliness, a friend jokes about the nails, but I call it caring, thinking of the man who gave us this land on the cove, the cottage, the boat- house full of boats. The only time I saw him he was at his work bench, a rich man straightening nails, moving from the bent can to the anvil to the straight.