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Outside Magazine, June 2004
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Crazy Mofos
Without a Barrel (cont.)

AFTER BREAKFAST, Jones and I return to the Mississippi Gulf Coast Coliseum, where the circus has set up camp, and sit down at a rickety picnic table with two of his new friends: forty-somethings Patricia White, a tiger trainer, and Pierre Spenle, a golden-maned French elephant trainer.

As we chat and sip coffee, I learn that the circus's management is busy trying to come up with a flashy stunt Jones can perform. Safety is a big issue, especially in light of the legacy of Canadian Karel Soucek, who survived a 1984 plunge over Niagara in a barrel but died in 1985 while reenacting his feat—using a 180-foot-tall platform and a ten-foot-deep pool of water—in Houston's Astrodome.

At the moment, Jones is more concerned with handling the questions that fly during intermissions. Patricia and Pierre offer to help him practice his spiel.

"Tell me why you did it," Pierre demands in a thick French accent.

"I had an inner belief . . ." Jones begins.

"Just tell people you slipped and fell in the river," Patricia suggests.

After a few more minutes of brainstorming, Pierre goes back to his elephants. When Jones heads off to take a shower, I'm left alone with Patricia.

"The whole affair," she says, "would be a lot less awkward if it had been a stunt."

"So you believe he was suicidal?"

"Yes," Patricia says quietly. "Right now, what he needs is a good canned response, because he can't bare his soul every time someone asks why he did it. Kirk hasn't really had a chance to sort things out—and now here he is, at the circus."

That evening, the coliseum fills with parents and children toting flickering glow-in-the-dark sticks. The scent of cotton candy mixes with the stench of elephant dung as hundreds of kids fidget giddily. As the music starts, I grab a seat.

First come the Arabian horses, 12 of them galloping in unison. Next come the acrobats. Finally, during intermission, the ringmaster introduces "the man who defied Niagara Falls!"—and Jones takes the stage, decked out in a cherry-red suit with a sequined cummerbund. As people gather around, Jones nervously fumbles through a stack of tourism brochures.

"It's a great sight," Jones tells a mother who's standing with her young son and daughter. "Come up and see it sometime."

"Were you in a barrel?" the boy asks.

"No," Jones says. "I was the first human being to go over without any protection—just the clothes on my back."

The boy mulls that a second, then says, "You must be the craziest man on earth."

"I wish I could go over Niagara Falls," says the daughter.

"Why did you do it?" a man calls out.

"I had an inner belief that I could challenge the falls and survive," Jones answers.

"I heard it was a suicide attempt," says the man. "That's what they said on TV."

"Well, yes, I know," Jones says awkwardly. "But now, you see, it's really more about my will to survive."
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