Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig ruralcomm.net. NS
Answer
ruralcomm.net. 4 NS ns2.gigfire.com.
ruralcomm.net. 4 NS ns1.gigfire.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0