Maxwell Devore

Maxwell Devore is introduced through two contrasting performances: a wealthy, physically frail man who makes a conspicuous effort to meet his granddaughter, and a public figure whose generosity has won him admirers in town. His appearances at Warrington’s softball games and his early encounters with Kyra show that his influence operates both through intimate family relationships and through the public image he cultivates.

Identity and public presence

After returning east for Lance’s funeral, Maxwell contacted Mattie to ask whether he could see his granddaughter. By then his relationship with Mattie had already been marked by offers of money intended to separate her from Lance, but he approached the funeral visit as if that history had not happened. His request placed a family reunion beside the older attempt to control the terms of Mattie and Lance’s marriage.

Maxwell also had a visible place in local life. He went to the softball field at Warrington’s every Tuesday evening in his motorized wheelchair, even though he had bought the property. Mattie recognized that his efforts to win the town’s good opinion included other gestures, but thought his enjoyment of the games was genuine. He liked the rough play: players slid into home, chased fly balls into the brush, and cursed one another after mistakes. The games were not simply a stage for public relations; the physical contest itself appealed to him.

Rogette Whitmore accompanied Maxwell to the field with an extra oxygen tank in a small red wheelbarrow with a whitewall tire. She kept a fielder’s mitt there as well, in case a foul ball came over the backstop. Maxwell caught one early in the season and received a standing ovation from the players and spectators. The scene gives his public presence a particular shape: a frail man in a wheelchair, a helper prepared for his medical needs, and a sudden moment of athletic participation that turns into communal applause.

The funeral meeting with Kyra

Mattie recalled the meeting at the funeral parlor, where Lance’s closed-casket viewing was taking place. She had stepped outside for a cigarette and asked Kyra to sit on the steps, away from the smoke. A large gray limousine arrived. Mattie recognized Maxwell, put her cigarettes away, and called Kyra to her. Rogette got out first, carrying an oxygen mask, and Maxwell followed in a gray suit and polished black shoes.

The short walk from the road to the steps exposed his physical condition. Rogette tried to help him up the three or four steps, but Maxwell shook her off and made it under his own power. He wheezed deeply, and the effort left him bent forward with his hands on his knees. Even though he could barely manage those steps, he had come to meet Kyra in person.

Maxwell looked at Mattie and then at the child. He picked Kyra up, though Mattie did not know how much effort it cost him. Kyra allowed it despite his being a stranger to her. When he asked whether she knew who he was, she shook her head, but Mattie felt that the child looked at him as if she almost recognized him. The meeting is therefore tender without being uncomplicated: Maxwell offers physical closeness, while Kyra’s response suggests an unfamiliar bond rather than an established relationship.

Money, access, and control

The visit at the funeral was not an isolated attempt to reconnect. In August 1994, after Lance told Maxwell that he and Mattie planned to marry in mid-September, Maxwell first offered Mattie $100,000. When she kept quiet, he raised the offer a week later to $200,000. Mattie’s account makes clear that these sums were not ordinary gifts: they were meant to persuade her to leave Lance and not enter the family on her own terms.

A later offer attached an even more extensive condition. Maxwell offered $2 million, deposited in a bank of Mattie’s choice west of the Mississippi, if she gave birth, left his grandchild with Lance, and stayed away from both Lance and the child until at least April 20, 2016, when Kyra would turn twenty-one. The amount and the deadline make the bargain’s purpose unmistakable. Maxwell was willing to pay for a prolonged separation that would give him control over when Mattie could return to her daughter’s life.

Mattie eventually allowed Kyra to visit her grandfather, with Rogette present by association, often once or twice a week and sometimes overnight. Kyra initially liked her Whita Poppa and adored Rogette. By spring, Mattie had become afraid for her daughter; by June, she could no longer tolerate the visits and stopped them. Kyra was intermittently angry with her mother afterward and continued to bring up Rogette, asking what she might be doing or whether she would like Kyra’s new dress. Her repeated requests for a treat after saying a string of rhyming words also kept the absent household in the everyday conversation between mother and child.

Retaliation and narrative significance

Maxwell responded to the end of the visits with complete fury. He called repeatedly, at first asking what was wrong and then making custody threats. He told Mattie that he would take Kyra away, portray Mattie publicly as an unfit mother, and leave her with no chance unless she relented and allowed him to see his granddaughter. The escalation from offers of money to threatened litigation reveals the coercive continuity in his approach: when persuasion did not secure access, he invoked the prospect of taking Kyra from her mother.

The softball field provides a counterpoint to this private conflict. At Warrington’s, Maxwell’s weekly attendance, his genuine pleasure in the game, and the ovation after he caught a foul ball help explain why townspeople might regard him warmly. In Mattie’s account, that public admiration coexists with the history of his efforts to buy her separation from Lance and the threats that followed her decision to stop Kyra’s visits. His character is thus presented through a tension between real attachment and forceful control, and between the generous local benefactor seen by the crowd and the powerful grandfather Mattie fears.