STATISTICS
Davonte Wallace Hackert
FULL NAME
42
AGE
June 5
BIRTHDAY
Owner Drip & Grind Coffehouse
OCCUPATION
Bisexual
SEXUALITY
Single
MARITAL STATUS
PERSONALITY
When you first meet him, Davonte may come across as a little bit aloof, but underneath it all he's actually a big soft-hearted cinnamon roll. Not that he can't be a hard-ass, because it's been necessary often enough to prove that he can, he just prefers to allow himself to be gentle. He fights for the Black Lives Matter movement, giving a third of his profits every quarter to it, and joining in marches and peaceful protests as often as he's able. He hires minorities, ex-cons, and disadvantaged youth (though not exclusively, as that would be equally problematic).He loves animals, though if he had to choose an actual favorite domesticated animal, he'd choose dogs. He's especially fond of Labradors and Great Danes.
APPEARANCE
5'10", black hair, dark brown eyes, generally has facial hair (mustache and goatee), gap between front teeth, tends toward casual style but can dress up very well when the mood strikes.He is generally extremely fit, and working out is important enough for him to do it regularly. He's not crazy about it, but if he had to choose between sleeping in until 8 or getting up at 6:30 to go for a run, he's choosing the run every time.
HISTORY
Davonte was born in South Bend, Indiana, to an young, unmarried couple. Eric Hackert wasn't ready to be a father, and he and his girlfriend Shawna had pretty well decided that they should have the baby and adopt it out. However, once Davonte was actually born, Eric realized he didn't want to give him up. It caused a series of fights, and Shawna argued with him vehemently until she realized he wasn't going to change his mind. She signed off on her parental rights, and Eric took the baby home. There he settled in with his parents support (though they were very clear that they were not going to be the ones to raise the baby), and with a lot of hard work he managed to graduate on time, and his graduation pictures taken by his friends and family all had Davonte wearing his Daddy's cap and tassel, the three-year old grinning like crazy in every one.
Eric started working in van conversion, which was early hours and hard work, but (really) good money. He saved up as much as he could, and by the time Davonte was in the second grade, they had a little house that was theirs, and the two of them settled into a routine that worked pretty well. Eric dropped his son off at his parents' house at 5:30 AM, Granny and Gramps got Davonte off to the school bus, and at the end of his day, he got off the bus at home, because Eric worked until 2 PM. They would go over any projects or class work for Davonte's school, eat dinner together, spend time playing video games or reading together, and then go to bed at 9 PM.
The first time that Davonte realized that sometimes people thought bad things about you due to the color of your skin (or, at least, the first time it stuck with him) was when he was in fourth grade, and a new girl came to the school. She was beautiful, and Davonte wanted nothing more than to spend every recess with her. It was only a few days into their friendship that Andrea came to the place under the climbing dome where they'd been sitting and talking every recess and told him they weren't going to stay friends. When he asked her why, she said "My daddy says I'm not allowed to be friends with-" She stopped, looked down, then to the side, avoiding his gaze. He pushed her to finish the statement, and the word that she dropped into the gravel between them froze him. He'd heard that word, plenty. His Uncle Raymond and Ray's friends all said it in rap songs and sometimes even threw it around at each other, laughing and crowing it. But Davonte had never heard a little white girl with hair the color of golden sunlight say it. Maybe he even thought that white people didn't know that word at all. Maybe he thought he'd never hear it from someone he thought of as a friend. He couldn't tell you, looking back, if any of those things were true, just that that word shattered in the gravel, splintering and making the ground cruel. He stood up and walked to the wall next to the door where they'd go in from recess, and when a teacher came over to check on him, he found himself telling the older woman exactly what had been said without meaning to. "Andrea said her daddy told her she's not allowed to be friends with niggers." At the teacher's gasp, he looked across the playground at where Andrea was moving toward the swings. "So I guess we ain't friends anymore."
That moment led to a lot of talks sitting in the principal's office, both by himself and with his Dad there, and even a time with Andrea and her parents there, too. It was all a lot like the Peanuts movies though, and after a while all Davonte could hear when the adults talked everything over was that "wah wah wah" sound. He didn't even care anymore. He and Andrea were classmates, and they didn't hang out on the playground, and who cared about one stupid word? The word hadn't even been what he'd really been hurt by, but the adults seemed to think that that was the most important part of the whole thing, so the wah wah wahs went on and on, and on the ride home, Eric muttered that he wanted to punch Andrea's dad in "his smug face", and then he apologized. That part was good. The wanting to punch Andrea's dad wasn't that bad, either.
Of course, things have a funny way of working in life, and in the eighth grade, he and Andrea wound up dating for a while. Or as close to "dating" as two almost fourteen year olds could manage. They met at the mall, went to PG-13 movies, and played video games together. Hell, they even kissed a few times. And then Andrea's father found out about it, and that was the end of that. Andrea was no longer allowed to hang out with the friends who spent time with Davonte, even if they were white. It was bullshit, and he and Andrea trying to sneak around to see each other a few weekends later led to her being taken out of the school and put into one on the other side of town. So that really was that.
Eric's brother, Ray, was killed at a local park when Davonte was sixteen. Ray's friends went after the guy who did it, and then more guys came in from Chicago to pay them back. It seemed for a while like it was never going to stop. Six funerals in as many weeks was the final breaking point. Something had to change. South Bend was not a huge city, but the problems it was facing were big city problems. Cops got involved, city government tried putting a stop to things, but all that did was piss people off more. In the end, Eric, his parents, Davonte, friends, and friends and family of the other murdered boys went on TV to call an end to the violence. "No More" was the battle cry of the grieving, and somehow, it seemed to break through to people. Davonte felt like he'd been a part of something big in his life. Like his voice had mattered. That was a powerful thing.
He wound up graduating sixth in his class, and decided (though if you ask him, his grandparents and Dad forced him into it!) to go to college. He got a few scholarships (GPA based, activism based, and one from the family of one of the men who'd been murdered after his Uncle), and Eric paid for whatever wasn't covered. Davonte went into business management and supervision, and in his final year of college, he did a project for a final grade that was about designing a restaurant, coffee shop, or similar business, including a business plan. He walked away from the class with a proposition to take to banks, so he figured "why not" and did it. There were no bites at the time, but he was told to not give up. He didn't give up, but he did move on to management in another company, and settled himself into a different kind of hard work than his dad did.
Dating was something that Davonte did when he had time and energy for it. He had figured out in his teens that he was bisexual, and the whole coming out thing had gone as well as it could have. His Gramps was a little taken aback (mostly because talking about sexuality was an uncomfortable thing for him anyway, no matter what the person talking considered their sexuality!). It took him two years before he could even ask Davonte if he'd been dating in general, and another two to get to "any nice guys?". The first time it happened Davonte almost spit out his coffee. Now, neither of them is phased by any of it, and he's even gone to Gramps with complaints about relationships, and they almost always wind up laughing once the advice part of the talk is over.
Granny and Gramps decided in 2008 that they were tired of South Bend, and it just so happened to coincide with a job offer that Davonte got in Illinois. Granny and Gramps settled in a small town called Cheshire Hills, though Davonte was in Quincy proper. It was a short jaunt to get to their place from his (20 minutes on a bad traffic day, 10 when the roads were clear), and they insisted that he come over for meals often. One of the nights he was there with them a few years into their living in Illinois, Gramps told him that they'd decided that he needed to try to open a business. Lots of stuff about "wasting your talents" and "think of all the differences you could make". He wasn't quite convinced, but the idea stuck in his mind. On particularly terrible days in his management job, he would daydream about owning his own business, but it wasn't until 2015 that it became a possibility. His dad gave him $60,000 as a start-up investor/"I believe in you" loan, and it took a year from the time he got the money (and a bank loan) for the first Drip & Grind Coffeehouse to open in Cheshire Hills.
2019 started with two huge things. 1. He paid his dad back the $60,000 plus interest and 2. Drip & Grind Coffeehouse opened its second location: inside the Cheshire Hills Library. It allows people to buy a coffee to drink while they read books, and it means that Davonte gets to meet a lot of new people every day. Of course, he has his favorite regular customers, at both locations, but the library patrons are special. The days he's there, he always gets smiles and "hey man"s and people asking how his weekend was, and it's great. He's even got some of the kids that run up to him and call him things like "The Coffeeman!" and one charming little girl who calls him Von, because she can't say Davonte properly yet and who wears a Black Lives Matter shirt sometimes. Things like that make him believe in a world where good might actually win one day.