This is the story of how my grandparents came by their house on Beaver Island.
Their previous renter decided that she wanted to live on the Island permanently and so Amai and Atate would have to look elsewhere.
True to their nature, they wandered off down the worst road on Beaver Island on their bikes, which leads to the Eagle Hill neighborhood.
When they biked down a particular steep two-track, they heard a grumpy “'Allo!”
Striding toward them down through the forested dunes was a man wearing goggles and wielding a chainsaw.
While slightly disconcerting, this image would not be altogether surprising if he were not also clad in immaculate toothpaste-green hospital scrubs.
Dr. Murder informed my grandparents, in faintly German-accented English and in no uncertain terms, that they were on private property and had better take their tourist posteriors elsewhere.
“Is there a house for sale in this neighborhood?”
“No. No houses.”
“All right then. Thank you.”
They turned to bike, or rather walk, back up the sizable hill that marks the center of Eagle Bay.
“But!”
Another 180-degree rotation.
“But I am thinking of selling my house.”
“You are?”
“I could show you now, if you would like.”
“Oh, we don't want to bother you any m-”
“Come with me.”
So they did.
This man's name, they learned, was Jurgen Siebacher. He was an anaesthesiologist who had moved to this country some years previously and began to parcel out his bales of money upon retirement. He owned a yacht in Florida among other scattered properties. He lived alone. And he was getting restless again.
His house was kept, as Amai later said, exactly how you would expect a German anaesthesiologist to keep it—blindingly immaculate. He walked in the door, hung his coat on a hanger in the otherwise deserted closet, put each of his boots on a spotless rubber mat, and showed them around his custom-designed hexagonal house.
My grandparents interacted with Jurgen for two days: this one and the day they signed the papers.
The day after that, Jurgen literally walked out of his house with a suitcase and the clothes on his back. He left his peanut butter in the cupboard and his sheets on the beds. He left his shirts on the hangers, his socks in the dresser, and his scrubs in the garage. He left cans of beer, pasta, prodigious amounts of tuna, tools, dishes, soap, everything. He also left an exquisitely prepared and exhaustive set of instructions for the house he had so lovingly designed and then abandoned.
We use the surgical drapes as dish towels. Grandpapa mows the lawn in scrubs and a mask. And no one has seen Jurgen since.
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