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Locknut, Michigan only really had one employer beyond its supermarket, schools, fire and police departments: the Stevia Motor Company’s local assembly plant. Inputs such as metals, fabrics, glass, rubber and paints went in one end on tractor trailers, and the newest Stevia cars and trucks rolled out the other. It was a nice place to work when the car markets were looking good. Lionel Lemming, a pudgy teal rodent in shortsleeves and cap, was the Deputy Assistant Plant Manager. He dreamed one day of just becoming THE Manager. All the workers on the assembly line liked him and hoped he would, too. He would surely be a more gracious and forgiving boss.
The first time Lionel had brought his quadruplet sons into the Plant, they had made quite a splash. Everyone was charmed by the dinky, soft-spoken boys, then in kindergarten. They were a living circus act, really, always moving in perfect unison and hardly doing anything without all being on board about it. The Assistant Plant Manager, Mr. Ferretday remarked that “only Lionel Lemming could have fathered an assembly line,” and gave him another two dollars an hour at the end of the visit.
Now however the boys were pushing sixteen. They had finished their last year of summer camp all the way out in California. The cracks were beginning to show at their return. Something had undoubtedly shifted.
Larry, Louie, Leonard and Liniment Lemming were all becoming individuals.
Louie, the second eldest, had been fated to start the process from the very beginning. Out of the three younger boys, he had clashed with the first born, Larry, the most. Second born kids tend to feel cheated or slighted by nature, and Louie was no exception. He decided to put stock in his looks. He began putting products in his hair and wearing bright clothes. He was determined to make friends everywhere he went and became quite the social butterfly. It was a mere two months before he was the coolest kid in Locknut High School. Girls flocked to him hoping he’d be their prettyboy bestie.
Leonard opted to become the family genius. The brothers thus far had been passable B and C students, but virtually overnight Leonard decided to become a bookworm and never turned back. The constant reading, often in the dark, soon led to him requiring glasses, another mark of distinction. He read so much that he tended to miss or rush his meals, and became the thinnest quadruplet. Nobody was surprised when he ultimately was the Class Valedictorian; he had made academics his life and left room for little else. That said, he never tired of doting on Liniment, his one little brother.
The aforementioned youngest was feeling left out and directionless as his siblings began transforming into different people altogether. He found much comfort in Leonard’s new concept of motherhenning him, even if it had irked him at first. Soon, for reasons nobody knew, Liniment stopped growing while his sibs continued to. It was just as if the universe was pointing in his face and reminding him he’d always be the family baby. Realizing he needed to find strength even if via other people, Liniment began acting like a sweetiepie, a prim and proper little goodie two shoes who followed the rules and the world couldn’t help but want to spoil. Lots of old ladies pinched his cheeks.
Larry became bitter, offended that his three brothers didn’t want to carry on being just like him for all eternity. (And that was ridiculous, because all four brothers had been carrying on being just like each other. Larry was just the oldest, not a trendsetter.) He became a bit mopey and withdrawn, now left with little choice but to become his own person too. After some soul-searching which turned up very little, he decided to revisit his childhood. He decided to think back to summer camp. Larry hiked. He birdwatched. He hunted. He chopped wood, wore flannel and climbed mountains, all alone, after years of being terrified of the very word “alone.”
And he loved it. He reconnected, (well, connected, for they had hardly spoken in the past,) with a similarly woodsy, tough-as-nails mongoose girl who had attended camp across the lake from his own. Patsy Smiles Hoo-ha had recently come to terms with the monkey boy of her dreams not being into her, and had been on a hike alone when they crossed paths in the woods, both far removed from their intended footpaths. She loved his joking suggestion about “getting lost together,” and that was that.