I Know My First Name Is Steven by Mike Echols Read Free Book Online Page A

and Murph, with Steven sitting up between them in the front seat, pulled away from the cabin and drove back to Yosemite in Parnell's white Buick, joining the highway and heading east at exactly the same point where Del and Mac left it. Parnell and Murph had to return to work that night and Parnell had elected to take his new "son" to his third-floor private room in employee dorm F in Yosemite Valley and secrete him there.
    After dropping Murph off at his cabin, what Steven later said he had considered "an adventure" came to a frighteningly brutal, abrupt end. Parnell drove to a remote, deserted parking lot on the valley floor and forced the seven-year-old boy to fellate him. Whereas Steven may not have understood what Parnell had done in bed the night before, the lad was now scared to death. He tried to pull away from his captor's grip. Brusquely, though, the kidnapper shoved the little boy's head down over his exposed, erect penis, Steven's copious tears and entreaties to Parnell to take him home not deterring the aroused pedophile as he repeatedly ejaculated inside the trembling child's mouth.
    Years later Steven bitterly recalled, "I told him I didn't like it when he ejaculated in my mouth, but Parnell didn't really care. The fellatio was uncomfortable but not painful . . . but it never,
ever
was pleasurable.
    "And the next time he told me, 'This is what I want you to do from now on,' and he pulled me over and held me down and put me through the motions. I'm with him, and at that age I didn't think I should be fighting him every night or have to be forced every night, so I just did what he wanted me to do."
    After that first traumatizing sexual assault, Parnell drove back to employee dorm F, parked, and in the late-night stillness spirited Steven up the stairs and into his private third-floor room. Once there he gently undressed the boy, tucked him in bed, and, telling Steven that he was going to work and would see him in the morning, gave the boy a couple of Nytol sleeping pills before leaving. As soon as his new son was asleep, Parnell slipped out the door, locked it, and strode the quarter mile through the snow to his accounting job at Yosemite Lodge.
    Before dawn the next morning Murph had routinely finished cleaning the lodge kitchen's ovens. A little past 5 A.M. he showed up at the front desk, where a solitary Ken was still busy figuring the guests' bills. Parnell gave Murph his room key and told him to check on Steven. Dutifully, Murph went to Parnell's room and, finding the little boy still asleep, sat and waited for him to wake up. When Steven did wake a couple of hours later he was hungry, and Murph left him and went to the snack bar and got both of thema breakfast of junk food which, as with all of his meals in Yosemite, Steven ate in Parnell's room.
    Shortly after 8 A.M. Parnell arrived and Murph left for his cabin. With Murph gone Parnell again performed fellatio on Steven. Stated Steven matter-of-factly, "Parnell wouldn't do anything to me while Murphy was around. Murphy was a sort of friendless person, and Parnell had drawn him into the whole thing because of the friendship. Murphy wasn't a kidnapper or pedophile. He didn't have any sexual interest in me. Murphy was just basically there to help Parnell with the kidnapping and that was it. He was a strange little man, but I grew to like him. I called Murphy 'Uncle Murphy' . . . and I still do." Steven smiled. Murph concurred with Steven's story, claiming that he never knew anything about Parnell sexually assaulting or molesting Steven until many years later.
    About his relationship with Murphy, Steven fondly recalled, "He was always real nice to me. He got a bunch of comic books for me from a friend of his and brought them to Parnell's room. He came in with this big bundle in his arms, and when he took off the wrapping paper there were two stacks of comic books about six inches high. So we sat there together and started reading them, and I think he enjoyed