LIVING WITH THE NIGHTMARES

By ELIZABETH GLEICK

THE CHAIN LINK FENCE AROUND the grassy field where the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building once stood is a monument to suffering great and small. Dozens of mourners congregate here each day, and like children at a wishing well, they cannot resist leaving tokens behind. Nudged into the 8-ft.-high grid are tin medallions of the Virgin Mary, polyester roses, a phone card with a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge, an Afro pick, a flowered scarf, a globe key chain, poems and prayers on scraps of paper, crucifixes made from twigs and, in this Easter season, scores of green palm fronds carried straight from the city's churches. One person took off his tennis shoes, scribbled a note on them and tied them to the fence.

One day last week firefighter Chris Fields joined the congregants at the fence. Fields, 31, was immortalized when a camera captured him carrying the body of one-year-old Baylee Almon from the bomb site--an image that came to symbolize all the heroism and tragedy of that bloody Wednesday. Thrown together by chance, Fields and Baylee's mother Aren have become friends; Almon says he calls her a couple of times a week just to check in. Speaking not just for himself but also for the hundreds of rescue workers who helped piece Oklahoma City together during those awful days, Fields admits his life will never be the same. He treasures his wife and three-year-old son as never before. "You think your family is going to be there every day," he says, fingering a brown teddy bear someone left in the fence, "but after something like this, you know it can all change in one second."

The fence is as close to a tangible memorial as Oklahoma City has managed to create in the year since the nearly 2 1/2-ton bomb exploded. It stands at the center of a flat, hard, raw and windswept place; this section of downtown, already in decline before the blast, is now a virtual ghost town. For Americans far from Oklahoma, the hole blown out of our sense of safety and stability at 9:02 a.m. last April 19 has mostly healed. But for those without the advantage of distance--for the families of the 168 people killed and the more than 600 injured; for the thousands of people who actually felt the earth shudder and heard the screams; for the now parentless children and childless parents--the balm of time hardly seems medicine enough.

There are the physical scars that many will bear forever. And there are the psychic scars: the uncomprehending grief at the loss of loved ones; the paranoia that it could happen again, maybe this April 19; the anxiety brought on by the wait for the trial of accused bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. According to one survey, 38.5% of the state respondents personally knew a victim of the blast. "The psychological healing has a long way to go,'' says Governor Frank Keating, who lost three friends and can still choke up during interviews. "All of us are still sensitive and still recovering.''

At the same time, says Keating, the bombing and its aftermath have "changed the way Oklahoma looks at itself. All Oklahomans take great pride in the way we handled the tragedy.'' The magnificent rescue mission by Oklahoma, the nation's sixth poorest state, with a public image stuck somewhere in the Dust Bowl era, "showed how people should care for one another,'' he says. "Out of this unbelievable evil, good flowed.''

That rescue mission is, of necessity, ongoing. Nancy Anthony, director of the Oklahoma City Community Foundation, which is disbursing $11 million from 16 different charitable funds, says her agency has received 13,000 separate contributions from around the country. "People held car washes, people sold T shirts,'' she says. "A group in California staged the musical Oklahoma! and sent the proceeds." Every Friday representatives of more than 40 charitable organizations and agencies--including Project Heartland, the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army, churches and civic groups--meet to consider how best to manage the funds and address individual cases. Agencies pooled money, for example, to buy a specially equipped van for Susan Walton, 45, whose legs were crushed. Some $6 million has been set aside to educate the 165 children who were financially dependent on someone who died in the bombing. The foundation has also paid off mortgages, retired car loans, hired nurses and paid the caseworkers who help families regroup, relocate or apply for such benefits as workmen's compensation. But it has also turned down requests, and that has engendered some bitterness. "It is hard to have $20,000 in credit-card bills," says Anthony, "but that is completely unrelated to the tragedy.''

NO AMOUNT OF MONEY OR help, however, can make the survivors whole again. P.J. Allen, now in the thick of the terrible twos, has been called the bombing's miracle child. One of only six children at the America's Kids day-care center on the second floor of the federal building to survive the explosion, 20-month-old P.J. was battered almost beyond recognition. One lung collapsed. He had burns on half his body, and the heat fused his vocal cords together. One earlobe was ripped off, both eardrums were ruptured, and his corneas were damaged. His left arm snapped in three places. For 30 days P.J. remained in the intensive-care unit at Children's Hospital of Oklahoma and doctors prepared his grandparents and legal guardians, Deloris and Willie Watson, for the worst: even if he survived the fevers and infections, he would probably suffer brain damage from two gashes in the back of his head.

But ever so slowly, P.J. grew stronger. One day his physical therapist decided the child was ready to sit up, so she went to get a car seat to help him support himself. "She walked into his room, and he was already sitting up," Deloris says. P.J. was just as tenacious when it came to standing. "His legs were so weak they would wobble. But when I would go to reach for him, he would fall down trying to push me away," Willie Watson says. "That's when I knew he would be O.K."

In P.J.'s case, as in so many others, O.K. is only relative. Black branches of burn marks crisscross the child's body, and he cannot play outdoors because the sun's rays would further damage his skin. He breathes through a tracheotomy tube, and at the age when most children are beginning to talk, he can emit only a gurgle. At night he sleeps attached to a ventilator, a humidifier and a heart monitor. He has undergone surgery 12 times in the past 12 months.

Charities covered P.J.'s medical expenses, but local residents chipped in to build a special playroom that blocks out ultraviolet rays and filled it with every toy imaginable. While the room was being built, a young carpenter came to help lay the concrete floor. "He kept sanding and sanding and asking us what kind of finish we wanted," Deloris recalls. "The two carpenters with him told him that it was fine like it was because all we were going to do was put carpeting down." After the carpenters had gone, Deloris looked outside, and the man was still there, sanding. "He told me his mother had died in the explosion, and P.J. was the first person he had seen who had survived."

Other victims have found it difficult to accept help. Cecil Elliott, who worked at a camera shop two blocks from the Murrah building, lost his best friend, his job, some of his hearing and his peace of mind in the blast. For months afterward, plagued by a constant ringing in one ear, he tormented himself over his first reaction to the explosion that threw him 15 feet onto his back. "I knew my friend was in the building,'' he says, choking up. "Your heart is saying, 'Get him out. He wouldn't leave you.' But your mind is saying, 'No way.' So you feel guilty." Elliott was so humiliated over asking for government help to buy his hearing aids that he has refused to seek supplemental-income aid, although he is still jobless and psychologically fragile. The Red Cross, he says, "wanted to know how much we spend on haircuts, on recreation, on gas and car insurance. I had already felt violated by the bombing and dragged through the mud, I don't plan on being dragged anymore."

In other ways too the great solidarity of the immediate aftermath has frayed and torn over time. Family members of adults who were killed, for instance, complain that their loved ones became virtually invisible as the media focused on the horror of the 19 children who died. "I am so tired of hearing about the 19 children," says Tina Tomlin, wearing a button with the picture of her smiling 46-year-old husband Rick, who was killed in the Murrah building. "There were 168 people killed, and they were all somebody's children. I can't even look at my mother-in-law before she starts to bawling."

Some African Americans feel that they too were invisible. Nearly all the memorable images in the days following the bombing were of white victims or their white rescuers, though eight of the 19 children killed were black. In the early days of the recovery effort, there were charges that contributions were not being distributed equitably, but Governor Keating denies that there was any racial bias. Other observers see a silver lining. Kim Jones-Shelton, chairwoman of the mayor's committee for families and survivors, believes that the bombing has helped improve race relations in the city. "It has made people from different walks of life work together," she says. "You'll see people hugging each other who a year ago would have had no contact at all."

Aren Almon says she has heard sniping remarks that she got too much attention as a result of the famous photo of her daughter and the fireman, and it is true that the contributions she received enabled her to buy a new two-bedroom house and a mauve Ford Explorer. But Almon has struggles of her own, trying to keep that photo from being reproduced on everything from T shirts to statues. "They mean well, but I wish everyone would lay off Baylee," she says. "I want to get over my daughter's death--even though I know I'll never be fully over it."

Then there is the matter of In Their Name, the book Keating's wife Cathy initiated, with the proceeds to go to victim relief. The book has so far earned $400,000, but the money is being set aside to cover survivors' future medical bills, as many of those most severely disabled are running out of insurance funds. That explanation doesn't wash with some irate victims. "We feel like we're being exploited," says Marsha Kight, whose 23-year-old daughter was killed, leaving behind a three-year-old daughter. "The families want that money to be used to help them, but you can't get anything out of them." Kight runs a support group called Families and Survivors United.

On Friday the President arrived in Oklahoma City to extend his condolences just 14 days before the April 19 anniversary of the tragedy. When the visit was scheduled, he couldn't have known that he would bring a new portion of grief for his friend Ron Brown. He urged his audience to pray for those downed over Croatia along with their own lost loved ones. On the actual anniversary date a memorial service for families of the murdered--many of whom were unable to attend the service held last year because bodies were still being removed from the building--will be held at the building site. At 9:02 a.m. they will observe a moment of silence, and then the names of the dead will be read aloud before the group moves on to the convention center for a more public ceremony that will include 600 rescue workers from around the country.

But the approach of April 19--a red-letter day to the lunatic right--is also a source of fear that some other madness will occur, an anxiety that is fed by the daily news reports from the Freemen's standoff in Montana. "It brings up the connection between Waco and the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City," says Randy Cochran, a psychologist at Project Heartland, a government-funded counseling center set up right after the bombing. "A lot of people are very on guard."

The physical rebuilding of Oklahoma City proceeds slowly, if at all. The downtown area, where 300 buildings sustained damage, "looks like a war zone," admits Mayor Ron Norick. The fate of the actual bomb site remains unclear while a committee deliberates about what sort of permanent memorial to build. Some Federal employees work out of temporary quarters in a mall complex. About 10 buildings have been razed, and many others are still in need of major renovations. Some 150 businesses have applied for grants or loans so far. Disbursement of the money, which comes from $39 million in federal block grants, just began in January.

For some businesses the bombing was a death knell. A small dry cleaner, for instance, found that 16 of the 29 customers who had left clothes there were killed. The two brothers who ran the store did not have enough insurance to cover damages. Dolores Hale, who operates Hale Photo, had to fire Cecil Elliott, her only employee. She once had 75 customers a week; now she is lucky to see 25. "The millions of dollars are not making people like them whole," says Bob Anthony, a member of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. "The truth is not a storybook finish."

At heart many Oklahomans are struggling, both privately and publicly, with what it means to be a victim and what it means to survive. Whose names belong on the yet-to-be-designed memorial? "Clearly you can identify the 168 people who died," says Jones-Shelton. "But how much injury makes you a survivor? I would venture to say that everyone in Oklahoma City heard the explosion that day and the whole city is still suffering from the devastation."

--Reported by Tammerlin Drummond and Margot Hornblower/Oklahoma City

With reporting by TAMMERLIN DRUMMOND AND MARGOT HORNBLOWER/OKLAHOMA CITY