Chapter 2
Noa
Glancing over my shoulder, I picked my camera up with shaking hands and took a couple of photographs; one of the old man, the gas pump and the old gas station building, then pulled off with thoughts of who the Dubois could be and why would they be waiting for me.
I wondered what connection they had to my mom and made a mental note to find out.
Even though the winding road looked like I had a long ways still to go, it really didn’t take me very long to make it into town.
For Magnolia Graves to be a place that I never visited before, in a weird way it felt very familiar.
Maybe it felt that way from all of the pictures I’d seen, because my mom was true to her craft of being a photographer and made sure to capture the true essence of the place throughout her time there before she left.
Or maybe my mind was playing tricks on me because it was a place that I had always wondered about and even sometimes dreamed about.
The town had a modern look in some areas but in others it looked as if it was trapped in a time warp. As I drove through the town, the directions the GPS kept giving me were slightly off which caused me to keep making a few wrong turns, taking me further into my own mini tour.
The population on the welcome sign read 13,813 so it wasn’t a fairly small town, but it wasn’t a big one either compared to the city of Atlanta. I still had a little time to kill before check in time at the hotel, so I drove around taking in the scenery.
There were schools, hotels, restaurants, a courthouse, cafés and boutiques and even a country club.
It actually looked like a beautiful place to stay at, and the old southern antebellum vibe made me think of Savannah, Georgia and New Orleans, especially the Garden District.
There was even what looked like a riverfront, that I saw off in the distance.
I planned to stay here for as long as I felt I needed to so I couldn’t wait to explore and learn as much about this town as I possibility could.
I drove into an area that looked like the north suburban wealthy areas of Chicago, then stopped at a stop sign that read, Dubois Hill Estates and instantly the same hair that rose on my neck back at the gas station, spiked again.
The Dubois was the name the old man dropped, making me feel compelled to explore more about them.
Even though the sign read Dubois Hill Estates there wasn’t a house or mansion in sight, at least not that I’d seen yet. It was almost as if the estate was its own small town or community. Whoever these Dubois were clearly had to be some very important and wealthy people.
I started noticing that throughout the town, and even on the Dubois Hill Estates sign that there was a magnolia blossom emblem. That very same emblem seemed to be strategically placed on many different buildings.
I remember seeing the emblem in some of the pictures that my mom took but I never really paid any attention to it until now because it was pretty much everywhere.
It was on streetlamps, buildings that looked forgotten, even a few homes had it engraved on their wrought iron fences.
They weren’t big or loud, yet it was still impossible to miss once you’ve seen them and knew what to look for.
Grabbing my camera, I took a picture of the emblem, then zoomed in on it. I couldn’t tell from just looking at it from my car, but on the picture, the words, no matter how far a person wanders, the roots of Magnolia Graves ensure they find their way back…always.
Those words hit me in a way that felt personal causing me to stare and take a closer look at it.
The center of the emblem had a bloomed magnolia flower that was made out of aged brass.
Each petal of the flower was detailed intriguingly and sculpted with little imperfections.
It also had these delicate veins on the magnolia flower that made it look like a real blossom, except it was made out of brass.
The blossom of the flower sat square in the center of a double-ringed circle.
You could tell that over the years, time aged the metal into these shades of burnished gold and bronze which gave it a feel that the emblem had been around just as long as the town itself.
It instantly reminded me of what my mom used to say about southern towns like Magnolia, remembering things longer than people did.
Thinking about it on a deeper level I believed every word of it now that I was able to see and feel the ambiance of this place for myself.
It was something that hit you as soon as you made it here, it didn’t take time to sink in.
I couldn’t help but to wonder how long the emblem had been around and of all of the secrets and changes that it witnessed.
The sides of the circle had these twisting vines and curling tendrils that were woven into patterns out of iron that were made to look like branches and roots.
Every curve and all of the detailing felt very intentional, giving it a ‘hidden meaning’ essence.
I planned to make it my business to find out what it meant, especially since my mom never spoke on it.
It gave this ‘old Southern wealth’ vibe.
To the naked eye, most people would look at it and think of it as nothing more than a decorative magnolia blossom, but to the people of the town and to a photographer such as myself, the emblem meant something much more important because it was intentionally eye-catching and intriguing and because it was literally everywhere.
The fact that I had in a sense found my way back to my roots made the statement that was engraved on it all too real and the fact that it appeared everywhere in the town made it mysteriously interesting for me to find out more about it.
It was like a mark that the town had branded itself onto.
In that moment my chest tightened, and I felt that I was exactly where I needed to be.
I reread the inscription over a few more times and each time it gave me an unsettling feeling because it confirmed the warning that the old man gave back at the gas station in a sense.
The name of the street that I was on was called Magnolia Way, and this road seemed to be the main road of the Dubois Hill Estates area within the town.
The fact that the town was named Magnolia Graves, the emblem was of a magnolia, and the Dubois Hill Estates were on the same road made me feel that the Dubois’ most definitely had to be a prominent and very important family in the town and their roots had to run very deep.
And the fact that they’d been waiting for me made me want to find out what connection they had with my mom.
I began to approach a church that was called Saint Mercy Baptist Church.
It had to be the mega church of the town because the first thing I noticed was how massive in size it was.
It was obviously an old building that had to have been restored multiple times throughout the years and the feeling that washed over me couldn’t be ignored just from being close to it.
One of the things I noticed about the state of Georgia was that there were a lot of hills and this church was located on a fairly large hill.
It was high enough where if you were to stand at the front door, I would assume you could overlook the entire town.
I was so impressed that I ended up driving up to it so that I could take some pictures of it.
Once I got to the top of the hill, just as I suspected you could see the entire town.
There were these massive white columns that had to stretch at least two stories high across the front of the building.
The paint on them were clearly weathered from having been exposed to generations of the Georgia rain and heat.
The church was made out of old brick and pale stone and from just looking at it you could tell that the walls were built to be thick enough to withstand a hurricane if need be.
Thus far, from all of the buildings that I’d seen, including the courthouse, this church was the biggest out of all of them.
It was so massive that it gave more of a monument feeling, not just a simple Bible belt church building vibe.
The steeple was so tall and massive that it looked like it was piercing the skyline.
It was so high that it could be seen from lower grown, and to be honest it was something that I spotted while driving to town which led me to even drive in the direction of it.
The land it sat on had to be 40 acres or more, and even though it was drizzling I drove around to take in the scenery as well as more pictures.
It was a photographer’s paradise with all of the massive ancient looking oaks that surrounded the property.
It was almost like the oaks were protecting and guarding the property because they were everywhere.
The branches on the oaks were draped with thick curtains of Spanish moss that appeared to be swaying even though there wasn’t any wind blowing.
The hill the church sat on was like a little community, the streets were these stone pathways and even though I didn’t go down any of them, from where I was standing, I could see that they were lined with white magnolias and camellias that looked just as old as the building.
There was a black wrought iron fence that enclosed the property and the stained-glass windows contained the design of the emblem and had to be at least twenty feet high. Some of them had biblical scenes that were set in rich shades of crimson, emerald, sapphire and gold.
I could only imagine what the inside of the church looked like and as bad as I wanted to get out of my car and explore, I’d have to save that excursion for another day.
To say that I was beyond impressed would be an understatement.
I actually began to feel very overstimulated by the visual, even the scent of magnolia blossoms was heavy but that wasn’t what caught and held my attention.