Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig billgather.com. NS
Answer
billgather.com. 5 NS ns-342.awsdns-42.com.
billgather.com. 5 NS ns-292.awsdns-36.com.
billgather.com. 5 NS ns-819.awsdns-38.net.
billgather.com. 5 NS ns-776.awsdns-33.net.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0