Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig hw-mcleansboro-slf.com. NS
Answer
hw-mcleansboro-slf.com. 5 NS ns1.hw-mcleansboro-slf.com.
hw-mcleansboro-slf.com. 5 NS ns2.hw-mcleansboro-slf.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
ns1.hw-mcleansboro-slf.com. 5 A 142.171.213.115
ns2.hw-mcleansboro-slf.com. 5 A 142.171.213.124
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0