The Whole Town Thought I Was Their New Pastor. By the Time I Found Out, I Had Already Married One Couple, Buried a Goat and Promised to Fix the Church Roof

The woman with the casserole was waiting for me at the gas station.

“You must be him,” she said, and pushed a warm dish of chicken and noodles into my hands. “Lord, you’re taller than your picture.”

I didn’t have a picture anywhere. I said thank you anyway. My mother raised me right.

I’m Jasper Coldwell. I’m 48, single, never married, and I buy and sell horses for a living. I had driven eight hours from Kentucky to Briar Gap, West Virginia, a town of three hundred and eleven people, to look at a chestnut mare named Penny.

That’s all I came for.

The woman’s name was Dorothy. She was seventy-something, wore a pink church hat on a Thursday, and had the grip of a lumberjack.

“Everybody’s waiting at the fellowship hall,” she said. “We’ve been without a pastor for fourteen months.”

“Ma’am, I think—”

“Don’t be modest. The bishop said you’d come Thursday. Tall, dark hair, gray at the sides, drives a white truck.” She looked at my white truck. She looked at my hair. “And Kentucky plates. It’s you.”

“I’m here about a horse.”

She laughed so hard she had to hold on to the gas pump.

“A horse! The bishop said you were funny.”

Behind her, a minivan pulled in. Then another. Then a truck with a goat in the back.

People got out. Smiling. Waving. Carrying pies.

And a young couple in their twenties holding hands, the girl already crying happy tears.

“Reverend,” the boy said. “We were hoping you could marry us. Saturday.”