Annie Proulx and Ang Lee own the characterisation - I'm just playing in their sandbox. This is from Alma Junior's POV.
My daddy weren't there much for me and Jenny when I was growing up. Oh, he made time for the important things – he even risked the job he'd had for fifteen years to walk me down the aisle. But he weren't there for the little stuff – the not so important things that still mattered to me and Jenny when we were little.
Even when he were there, he was quiet – almost distant, like he was waiting for someone to suddenly appear. 'Parently my daddy's always been like that, since before my momma ever met him, and he didn't really change much from what I can remember. 'Course, he's had a tough life, and few things really made him truly happy. He weren't even happy on my wedding day – proud looking, but not happy. He took to Curt though, despite thinking his little girl could do a lot better than a 'roughneck'.
When I recall my daddy being happy, I remember him setting off on one of his fishing trips. Those ended when I was twenty-four though, and my daddy's never really been happy since. My momma said once that he was with an ol' fishing buddy when I was six and asked her, too young to know that the tightness around her eyes meant I shouldn't have asked.
After one thanksgiving, when my daddy had stormed out after an argument with my momma, the only thing me and Jenny ever caught was 'that damned Jack Twist' when my momma was explaining to my stepdaddy why daddy had just run outta there. By then both me and Jenny were old enough not to bring up that incident again, even though I wanted desperately to know just who Jack Twist was. We discussed it 'tween ourselves, though, and came to the conclusion that he had had something to do with the divorce 'tween momma and daddy.
About two years after me and Curt got married, I was over at my daddy's trailer with my little baby, and I asked him. I just came right out and asked who Jack Twist was. I don't think I've ever seen my daddy more shocked in my life. He asked me where I'd heard that name, and I told him that momma had mentioned him way back on that thanksgiving.
It was the only time I've ever seen tears in my daddy's eyes. He sat back with a sigh, looked straight at me, and just said that Jack was an old friend of his – that they had herded sheep up someplace called Brokeback Mountain, and that they used to go fishing before Jack died. I thought that's why my daddy was so sad, because his friend must've been young when he died.
Little Annie and I left soon after that. Daddy waved us off from the door of his trailer, but he seemed really sad, and I wish I'd never brought that name up.
Another time, about ten years after that, I was visiting my daddy and tidying up his place a bit. I went to put a jacket away in his closet, and I noticed something on the inside of the door. There were two shirts hanging up on the same hanger, a dark blue denim one under a plaid one, and a postcard with a picture of a mountain on it pinned up beside them. There was a dark stain on the sleeves that looked a little like dried blood, and I got so scared. Scared that my daddy might've done something bad.
I left soon after, and on the way home those damned shirts and that postcard were all I could think about. By the time I reached home, I had made up my mind to trust my daddy – I knew he could not have done anything so bad.