Warrington’s is a resort on Dark Score Lake whose softball field, dockside bar, lodge, and path to The Street make it one of the story’s most important shared spaces. Its games preserve an image of local fellowship, while its ownership by Max Devore draws the resort into the custody conflict; its lodge and lakeside route also become crucial to the story’s final danger and rescue.

Setting and Features

The resort is reached from The Street by a path passing an abandoned boathouse, sheds, and a gazebo partly covered by blackberry creepers. The route opens onto the softball field, where a rustic trail and the backstop mark the edge between the public gathering place and quieter spots from which visitors can watch. The account also identifies The Sunset Bar at the end of a long floating dock extending from The Street. The lodge, bar, field, and paths form a connected lakeside setting rather than a single building.

Warrington’s is also a commercial and social landmark. Mattie reports that the story about the custody dispute is available at the resort, as well as at the Village Cafe and Dickie’s All-Purpose Garage. That detail places local opinion and local business in the same network: the conflict is not confined to the courtroom or the Devore family, but circulates through the places where residents gather and talk.

Softball and Community Life

The Tuesday softball games are a recurring feature of life at Warrington’s. Max Devore attends in his motorized wheelchair, and Rogette Whitmore accompanies him, bringing an extra oxygen tank in a small red wheelbarrow. She keeps a fielder’s mitt there in case a foul ball comes over the backstop. Max has caught one during the season and received a standing ovation from players and spectators. The games give him a visible place in the town’s life, although Mattie doubts that watching them puts him in touch with the memory of his son, Lance; she believes he is there for the hard play itself.

Mattie’s recollection sets that present-day spectacle against an earlier, more convivial version of the games. She and the other young women stood behind the first-base side of the backstop, smoked or waved punks at insects, cheered their partners, and shared drinks. Afterward, players and spectators might go to the Village Cafe, where Buddy Jellison made pizzas and the losing side paid. On the field, the players spent their aggression in competition; afterward, the group laughed together. The remembered games therefore represent both an ordinary ritual of community and a sharp contrast with the isolation Mattie now feels.

That fellowship has faded for her. Her former best friend, Helen Geary, and Lance’s friend Richie Lattimore came to the funeral and visited briefly afterward, but neither has continued to see Mattie. She compares the loss of contact to a well that first yields only a trickle and then gives nothing but air. Her account makes the softball field’s past sociability meaningful precisely because that belonging no longer extends to her.

Max Devore and the Resort

Max’s attendance at the games is part of his public return to the town. Mattie recognizes that some of his actions appear intended to purchase local approval, even as she believes his enjoyment of softball is genuine. His presence at Warrington’s thus carries two meanings at once: he participates in a local institution, but he also benefits from the public goodwill such participation can produce. The distinction matters amid the custody fight, in which Mattie and her daughter have become the focus of a struggle involving Max.

The resort’s ownership also shapes its reputation in town. Mattie says that Max rescued the garage from foreclosure, and that the garage’s owner and associates consequently regard him with great admiration. She contrasts their favorable view with the account Michael Noonan received from Bill Dean. Warrington’s and other local businesses are therefore not neutral scenery: ownership, money, and the local stories told about Max influence how residents view the conflict.

The resort is also where Mattie describes Max’s first meeting with her daughter, Kyra. Max had little strength left after holding the three-year-old, and Mattie had to take her back before he could drop her. Rogette helped him, and he used his oxygen mask before speaking to Mattie. Mattie recalls that, after looking at Kyra, he admitted that he had been a fool; she agreed, and his response made clear that her frankness angered him. The encounter joins Warrington’s to the personal origins of the later struggle: Max’s attachment to Kyra becomes immediate and intense, while Mattie remains wary of his intentions.

Paths, Memory, and the Storm

Warrington’s is tied to Jo Noonan’s earlier visit to the area. In an account reconstructed after her death, a witness remembers Jo leaving the house, returning looking relieved, and suggesting a walk down The Street to the resort. At The Sunset Bar, she bought him a beer and a sandwich at the end of the floating dock; afterward, she proposed watching the softball game, predicting that someone would hit a long home run into the trees. The episode links the resort’s ordinary pleasures to Jo’s unexplained actions and the larger investigation into her past.

Michael later visits the field himself. After giving testimony in the custody case, he walks down The Street, follows the signs through the overgrown grounds, and emerges in deep center field. From there he reflects on the mysterious man who had accompanied Jo to a game, but decides against pursuing the lead, telling himself to let sleeping dogs lie. His position beyond center field keeps him apart from the spectators while placing him inside the landscape of Jo’s remembered outing and Max’s regular public appearance.

During the July storm, Warrington’s becomes a point of orientation and a route back toward safety. Michael realizes that Rogette has brought Kyra toward the resort, not away from it: Rogette has been based there since Max’s body was sent to California, and The Street is the way back to Warrington’s. As he runs through the storm, fallen trees expose the rear of the lodge, which has been badly damaged by two trees that have fallen across it. Kyra is near Rogette on the path, and the dock toward The Sunset Bar is twisting above the rough water. The resort’s familiar connections—the lodge, path, field, and dock—are transformed by the storm into a dangerous landscape through which Michael must reach the child.

Narrative Significance

Warrington’s gathers the novel’s competing versions of community into one setting. The softball games recall a time when neighbors shared food and laughter, but Mattie’s present isolation shows that such fellowship can fail when fear and social pressure take hold. Max’s attendance and ownership place wealth and public approval within that same communal space, complicating the apparent ease of the games.

The resort also bridges investigation and action. Jo’s remembered visit makes the field part of the story’s unresolved past; Michael’s solitary visit brings that history into the present; and the storm turns the resort’s paths and waterfront into the setting for the final pursuit of Kyra. Warrington’s is therefore more than a recreational backdrop: it is where the town’s public face, private history, and immediate danger meet.