a placeless world

He was always uncomfortable with all the fuss. So after awhile, Leslie Jones allowed her son to have it his way.

Instead of signs and flags and raucous applause at the Salt Lake International security gate, Jones would greet her boy, Lance Cpl. Quinn Keith, at the passenger pick-up curb.

"We'd just circle around and around the terminal and then we'd see him there" Jones says. "He'd just be there, carrying a small backpack. That's how he wanted it."

And that's how she expected it. But staring over the airport tarmac on Tuesday evening, tears falling from beneath her brown sunglasses, Jones is about to experience a very different homecoming.

"I just want to be here to welcome him home," she says. "It's unfortunate it has to be this way. This isn't the way I'd planned. But I still want to greet him."

Baggage handlers dart between broad-winged airliners and under loading ramps. In the bustle, the orange-vested workers might have missed the red van's arrival.

But its passengers — seven U.S. Marines in dress blues — are unusual in this part of the airport. Within moments, their mission becomes clear: A black hearse rolls onto the ramp behind the van.

The carts slow, then stop. The handlers, gathering under a loading ramp, stand still.

"Who is it?" one handler yells to a coworker over the roar of jet engines.

"Another Marine," the second handler answers.

Both men set their eyes to the ground.

Overhead, passengers awaiting a flight to San Diego gather at a window. A silver-haired man places his hand over his heart and closes his eyes.

"We see a lot of caskets, you know, doing this job you see a lot of that," says ramp agent Alan Lamm. "But this is the first time I've seen anything like this."

It's not a first for Salt Lake City police officer Patrick Jones. Not a second either.

In fact, Jones believes he has been on duty each time a fallen member of the armed services has passed through Salt Lake International since American forces entered Iraq in March 2003.

And Lance Cpl. Keith's return marked the second time in a week Jones has been called on to escort a flag-draped coffin through the airport.

"I'm usually the tough one, the one who nothing fazes," Jones says. "But that last one really got to me."

The last one — Lance Cpl. Michael Allred — was buried Monday in Hyde Park. Allred was killed in the same suicide bomb attack that claimed Keith's life.

The uniformed Marines gather near the front cargo hold of the 737 docked at Gate C-11.

An empty white cardboard box — the size and shape of a coffin — follows some postal boxes down the ramp. Moments later, Keith's silver, flag-draped casket becomes visible.

The sight of the coffin sends Leslie Jones into the arms of her fiancé, James LaSelute. To their right, Keith's 11-year-old cousin, Tre Deal, sobs.

As the casket comes to rest at the bottom of the ramp, the boy — who has been instructed by his mother to say goodbye to his cousin on behalf of his entire family — approaches. He reaches up and touches the casket and bows his head. Other family members do the same.

The tarmac remains still. The San Diego-bound passengers, now assuming their seats in a nearby 737, look out the port-side windows. Several wipe tears from their eyes. One woman folds her hands before her face in prayer.

Four people are standing, hands over hearts, as the Hearse exits the tarmac gate. Two wave American flags.

The sight prompts a new round of tears from Keith's family members.

"We just wanted to do for Lance Cpl. Keith what others have done for our family," says Brett Allred, father of the Marine whose body made the same trip through Salt Lake International just days earlier.

"He's a hero," Allred says of Keith. "And we wanted to welcome him home as a hero. To welcome him home with honor."

Shivering in front of the airport police station, the hearse carrying her son's body parked nearby, Leslie Jones is still fantasizing about the homecoming she had hoped for.

"This is so hard for me and for my family," she says. "This is not the way it should have happened. But I will be strong for him and carry on."

After all, the grieving mother reasons, her son was always uncomfortable with all the fuss.