American Goddesses

Democratic Republic of Congo -- The dusty green war trucks rumbled into the sun-baked central square of the small village, gears clanking and brakes squealing.

Villagers peered from their wood, straw and mud huts, where they sheltered from the midday heat. They saw the convoy of half-a-dozen flatbed trucks and hum-vees, bristling with armed men in green camouflage and purple berets.

“Into the square! Everyone! If you value this worthless village! Now!” roared the unit’s leader. He stood in the lead humvee beside the driver. He watched like a raptor, as the men, women and children of the unfortunate village shuffled fearfully into the square.

Papa Rozie, village mayor, rushed into the cool dimness of his own home, furthest back from the square.

“Mama Rozie!” he cried. “The soldiers are back! The soldiers are back! We must hide!”

Mama Rozie, an immense black woman cloaked in an orange and blue muu-muu, looked up from the cassava root she was grating for sweet pudding.

“Calm yourself, Papa,” she said to her thin, wizened husband, a serene smile on her generous features. “We will go speak to these soldiers.”

“Speak to the soldiers! Don’t you remember last time?”

The big woman took the hand of her quaking husband. “This will not be like last time,” she said. She led him like a child out of the house and into the square.

The appearance of the large, colorfully-clad woman and her small mate caught the leader’s eye and he barked a command. On one of the flatbeds, a soldier knelt by his M2 50-caliber recoilless rifle, tripod mounted, loaded with armor-piercing rounds.

The soldier swiveled the weapon toward Mama Rozie and lined her up in the crosshairs of the gun sight.

“Make an example of this large woman!” the commander shouted, and the gunman squeezed the trigger.

Derbyshire, U.K. – The tall man, dressed in black, stepped up to the bank teller’s window. “Look,” he said to the small woman on the other side of the counter. He moved his jacket aside, revealing a large-caliber hand-gun in his waistband.

He handed her a cloth bag.

“Fill this with money,” he said. “Do it quietly. If you hit the alarm, I’ll shoot you in the face. In the confusion I’ll get away. I’ll shoot a few of your customers on the way out.”

He stared directly into the teller’s intense blue eyes, taking in her tousled mop of white hair and handsome, regular features.

She smiled.

Ueno Zoo, Tokyo – A series of mishaps and at least one failure to precisely follow transport protocols, and the two tigers leaped to freedom into the crowded pedestrian avenues of the zoo.

People screamed and scattered as the 10-foot-long, 600-pound cats stalked warily past the lion enclosure toward the nearby souvenir and snack shop.

Spying a group of school children paralyzed with fright, the two animals charged with light leaping bounds that appeared to defy the constraints of gravity; nothing between them and red carnage but one small kimono-clad young woman.